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HEDRI: 

OR, 


BLIND JUSTICE. 



BY 

HELEN MATHERS, 

Author of “ Found Out,'' “ Cherry Ripe,'^ “ Story of a 
Sin," etc., etc. 





NEW YORK: 

FRANK F. LOVELL & COMPANY, 
142 AND 144 Worth Street. 



I 


Copyright, 1889, 

By John W. Lovell. 


H BDRI 


CHAPTER I. 

“ For I will prove that feythful love 
It is devoycl of shame ; 

In your distress and heavinesse. 

To parte wiih you, the same ; 

And sure all tho’ that do not so, 

Trewe lovers are they none ; 

For in my minde of all mankynde 
I love but you alore.” 

The woman flashed across the court at me a look of 
scorn, ay, and of contempt, but of fear not a trace. 

And yet I, who had placed her in the dock where 
she stood, I, who had made those purely disinter- 
ested efforts to hang her, that seemed certain to be 
crowned with success, felt that however much I 
might deserve her detestation, I in no sense was or 
looked the mistaken fool that she supposed me. 

Judith they called her, and a Judith she was, with 
the grand frame and limbs of a daughter and mother 
\ 


4 


HEDRI, 


of the gods, and like her great namesake, she too had 
slain her man, though not to such heroic purpose and 
results. 

This woman had no tribe to glorify her crime, and 
only one friend on earth with a heart to be wrung 
by it, and that man now stood as closely as might 
be, beside her, his comeliness all aged and dimmed 
by the anguish through which she had brought him. 

It was but a tragic variation of the old story of 
Enoch Arden, only this Enoch did not steal away, 
leaving her to happiness, but remained, to be 
speedily removed by her hand, unless all things in 
heaven and earth lied against her. 

And yet I felt, for the first time, sorry for my 
work, when that look of hers, in which spoke a 
virile innocence, so sure of itself as easily to afford 
contempt, flashed upon some inner consciousness of 
mine, leaving outside it the brain that had already 
tried and found her guilty. 

But, no — I had seen this strong, calm woman in 
the throes of fear and agony, her not easily moved 
nature shaken to its very depths, and no criminal yet 
ever had circumstantial evidence so pitilessly arrayed 
against her. I forced my eyes from her, and fixed 
them on the counsel for the prosecution, who had al- 
ready commenced his indictment against her. 

“ This woman,” he said, “ little more than a child at 


HEDRI. 


5 


her marriage, had lived a notoriously miserable life 
with Seth Treloar, though, to do her justice, no blame 
of any kind attached itself to her conduct as a wife; 
and when within the year he disappeared, leaving no 
trace, she remained in her native village, supporting 
herself by any sort of work that came in her way. 
She does rfb^^ppear to have encouraged any lovers ; 
but when seven years had passed,- she boldly an- 
nounced that she felt herself legally free of Treloar, 
and married a man whose character was as good as 
her former husband’s had been the reverse, and whom 
she loved with a passion more than equal to that 
detestation she had felt for the other. From being 
the butt of a drunken and brutal scoundrel, she be- 
came the cherished and adored wife of the best look- 
ing and best natured man in the village, and for 
some brief months tasted that supreme happiness 
which is known only to those persons who in the past 
have acutely suffered. Perhaps so much content 
irritated the on-lookers, for only cold looks were cast 
upon the two, while the malicious prophesied that 
Treloar’s return would cut short the pair’s felicity, 
and affected not to consider them man and wife at 
all ; so that by degrees they became completely 
isolated from their neighbours, and no living feet 
save their own ever crossed the threshold of Smug- 
glers’ Hole.” 


6 


HEDRI. 


This house had formerly been the rendez-vous of 
smugglers who were said to have within it some hid- 
ing place in which to dispose of their stolen goods ; 
but though smugglers went there no more, its bad 
character remaine'd, and its lonely position at the end 
of the parish made it feared, so that the rent was a 
mere trifle, and as Treloar had brought Judith back 
to it a bride, so now Judith brought Stephen Croft 
thither as bridegroom, and here they dwelt as much 
alone as on a desert island. 

The woman defied her world, caring nothing, but 
the man felt her position keenly, and at last per- 
suaded her that it was best to emigrate, and to this 
she at last very reluctantly consented. 

Six months, then, after the ceremony that the vil- 
lagers declared no ceremony, Judith Croft sat one 
night by the fire in the almost empty cottage from 
which she was to depart on the morrow, with the 
man who represented all the sweetness and happi- 
ness she had found in her life. 

She heard steps on the path, the Fateh lifted, and 
we may surely pity the unhappy woman when, spring- 
ing through the dusk, she found herself clasped in 
the arms, not of Stephen Croft, but of Seth Treloar. 

Of what passed between them, God alone was wit- 
ness, and God alone knows the truth ; but when the 
man she loved came in an hour later, she was sitting 


HEDRI. 


7 


alone by the hearth, with no sign of excitement or 
anxiety about her. 

She prepared the fish he had brought in for sup- 
per, ate with him, and from that moment he never 
1' ft her until they rose early next morning, to be in 
time for the train that was to take them to Liver- 
pool. So much Stephen Croft said in his evidence, 
most reluctantly given, but still more reluctantly two 
damning pieces of evidence against her were drawn 
from him. 

He said they had arranged for their landlord to 
take over the few poor sticks of furniture they pos- 
sessed, and had sent on their small personal belong- 
ings the day before, but there were some few odds 
and ends to be carried between them, and he had 
brought in a coil of stout rope for binding them to- 
gether. "At starting, the rope was missing, but his 
wife could not account for its disappearance more 
than himself, and did not “fuss” about it as most 
women would have done under the circumstances. 
At breakfast (this was only dragged from him bit by 
bit) he noticed that she ate very little, but furtively 
collected food on a plate, and set it aside, as if for an 
unexpected guest. He asked her why she did this, 
and she said the neighbours would be all over> the 
house the moment their backs were turned, and she 
would gratify their curiosity as to what they had for 


8 


HEDRL 


breakfast. He reminded her that their landlord was 
trawling that day, and several subsequent days, at a 
distance, and that no one could know the secret 
place, previously agreed upon, where they were to 
hide the key of the house. She laughed strangely, 
and said that though you might lock people out, you 
could not lock them in; but this speech, though he 
did not understand it, was afterwards distinctly 
quoted in her favour. Then they collected their small 
effects, and without a God-speed from a friend, or a 
kindly eye to follow them on their path, passed away 
from the home in which they had been so happy, to 
the one that had yet to be earned in the uncertainty 
of the future. Perhaps the man looked back, but at 
some distance from the house the prisoner did more, 
she affected to have forgotten something, and bid- 
ding him go forward, retraced her steps quickly. 
But he reluctantly admitted that she returned empty- 
handed, that she was pale as a corpse, with wild eyes, 
that she gasped for breath, stammering and present- 
ing every appearance of a woman who has received 
some horrible shock, but when he asked her if she 
had met with some insult from a passing neighbour, 
she shook her head, but would give no explanation 
of her state. She showed extraordinary eagerness 
to reach the train, but did not utter a syllable during 
the journey, though a sinister incident occurred dur- 


HEDRL 


9 


ing it. That incident (here the counsel turned and 
looked steadily at me) was witnessed by a gentleman, 
to whose keen observation, swift action, and masterly 
manipulation of fact and surmise was due the bril- 
liantly conclusive chain of evidence that had brought 
the prisoner to where she stood that day. 

This gentleman had in his hurry jumped into a 
third instead of a first-class carriage, and congratu- 
lated himself on his mistake when he saw the two 
other occupants of the compartment. They were 
simply the two most magnificent specimens of man 
and womanhood that he had ever seen in his life, but 
the man looked troubled and perplexed, and the 
woman gave one the same impression as of some 
usually calm majestic aspect of nature, now convulsed 
and shaken to its very core. He saw the fine hands 
clenched beneath her woollen shawl, the splendid 
eyes blind to all save some awful inward sight, and 
he recognized that a tragedy had been, or was to be 
enacted, and he watched her, with entire unconscious- 
ness to herself, unremittingly for mile upon mile. 

This vigilance was unexpectedly rewarded. She 
moved abruptly, searched her pocket for a handker- 
chief with which to wipe her damp brow, and pulled 
out with it a small, curiously shaped silver box that 
fell into the man’s lap. The blank horror of her 
eyes slowly quickened with some recollection, she 


lO 


HEDRI. 


stretched liL-r hands to take it, but he drew back, and 
with astonishment in his face lifted the lid, and found 
the contents to be a white powder. Into this powder 
he thrust his fore-finger and instantly applied it to his 
tongue, on the moment crying out that his tongue 
was burning, then that his throat and stomach were 
on fire, and violent nausea completed the symptoms 
of having swallowed a violent irritant poison^ 

“You have taken arsenic!” cried the stranger 
present, whereon the prisoner shrieked out, snatched 
the box from Stephen’s hand, and threw it far out of 
the window. 

The stranger, approaching the window, took the 
exact bearings of the spot where it must have fallen, 
they were then close to a station, and there he got 
out, having watched these two until the last moment. 

The man was urging questions on her as to who 
gave it her, or where she had got it, but beyond that 
one shriek, the stranger heard no sound issue from 
her white lips from first to last. 

Only as the other closed the door, he saw her lean 
forward, and press the fisherman’s hand with a pas- 
sion of tenderness, that startled the gazer •, clearly 
the poison was not intended for the husband, there- 
fore for whom } 

The stranger bade the guard watch the pair, and 
communicate to him, at an address he gave the 


HEDRT. 


station at which they descended, then he retraced 
the distance he had come from a certain point, and 
with very little difficulty found what he wanted. 
The box was of pure silver, of foreign make, which 
he subsequently discovered to be Austrian, and it 
was three parts full of arsenic. He locked the box 
away, said nothing to anybody, but watched the 
daily papers carefully. 

He had not very long to wait ; on the fourth morn- 
ing he read how in a cellar, formerly used by smug- 
glers beneath a cottage at Trevenick, in Cornwall, 
had been found the dead body of a man whose ap- 
pearance gave rise to suspicions of foul play, and 
who, on examination was found to have in his viscera 
sufficient arsenic to kill three or four men. The man 
was well clothed, well nourished, and concealed in a 
belt upon him was found one hundred gold pieces of 
money. He was at once identified as the long mis- 
sing husband of a woman who had within the past 
few days left the village for Australia with her second 
husband. 

Jake George, a fisherman, swore to seeing a man 
enter the house at seven o’clock the evening before 
the pair left, but he saw no one come out, though 
his work kept him near by till eight, when Stephen 
Croft himself came home. He was not near enough 
to hear voices, though he could easily have heard a 


HEDRI. 


cry had there been one. He peeped, as would be 
shown in the evidence, but he could see nothing. 
With what superhuman swiftness and strength must 
this woman have overcome her victim, so that not 
even a moan or cry reached the spy without ! What 
self-control must have been hers that she could meet 
her husband with a smile, and sit at board with him 
that night, however absolutely she might break down 
on the morrow ! In one short hour she had done as 
much, and more, as a man could do, and she had 
done it thoroughly. Secure by her hearth, her 
murdered man hidden at her feet, she sat with un- 
daunted front, no smallest trace around of the man 
who had visited her. Without that hollow cave 
below, she might have murdered, but could not have 
concealed him ; but as it was, this hiding-place fav- 
oured the swiftness and subtleness of the crime to an 
extraordinary degree. For who could believe that 
he, the former master of that house and the woman 
in it, walked of his own free will to the disused trap- 
door, and deliberately elected to be lowered by a rope 
to a cold and noisome dungeon peopled only by rats } 
No ! It was for Stephen Croft to quail, to shrink 
away out of sight as a defrauded man, or, if Treloar 
shewed himself moved by his wife’s entreaties, and 
actually consented to leave her to her happiness, 
would he not have left, as he came, by the house 
door 


HEDRL 


13 


We see no such thing when, in imagination, we 
project our gaze upon that bare dismantled room ; 
we see a man who, whatever he may have been to her 
in the past, had since possibly repented, and prosper- 
ing in his new life (as his clothes sufficiently proved), 
had remembered the woman who once loved him, 
and returned to share his prosperity with her. He 
found her more beautiful than ever, and probably 
the very thought of taking her away from another 
man enhanced her value in his not over-fastidious 
mind ; he meant to tajce his rights, and told her so, 
while the miserable woman only half heard him in 
straining her ears for her lover’s step without. She 
must have acquiesced to all appearance in his demands, 
or he could not have taken from her hand the cup of 
milk with which she had stealthily mixed the poison ; 
strangely enough, she must have also been possessed 
at the time of a strong narcotic, since traces of one 
were found in the stomach, so that the cool firm hand 
doubly doctored the draft she handed to the unsus- 
pecting man. 

Let us picture her then, watching his unavailing 
struggles and agonies till the opiate deadened the 
effects of the poison, and he sank down in a stupor 
that she knew must end in death, nay, that may so 
have ended abruptly, as she stood by and watched 
him. Her crime is accomplished, but how to hide it ? 


14 


HEDRI. 


Seeher eyes wander hither and thither over the walls, 
the floor, upon the door through which she might 
drag this heavy weight, but that she may meet her 
lover on the threshold ! Her glance falls on a dis- 
coloured ring level with theground, and scarcelyvisible 
save to those who know where to look for it, she creeps 
nearer and nearer to it. She kneels down, and drags 
at the rusty ring ; a square door, about the width of a 
strong man’s shoulders, rises towards her, beneath is 
a black void, and that void is to be the hiding-place 
of her husband’s body. Close at hand lies a coil of 
cord, she deliberately cuts it in half, and kneeling down 
beside him, makes one portion fast round his body be- 
low the armpits, then with the ends drags that hud- 
dled, helpless body easily enough along the floor until 
the open square is reached. And now comes the most 
difficult part, physically, of her enterprise. To thrust 
him feet foremost down that pit would be easy 
enough, but with all a woman’s extraordinary insensi- 
bility to crime, but sensitiveness to a cruelty, she 
could not bring herself to do this, but with arms 
stronger surely than a woman’s ever were, lowered 
him so carefully that not a bruise ora mark was any- 
where to be found on his person. 

Picture her placing her husband, his feet to the 
pit, his head to her knees, see her give him a strong 
push that sends his feet over the edge, and instantly 


HEDRI. 


*5 


the body disappears with such a jerk as nearly to 
throw her forward on the ground ; but with straining 
muscles she holds grimly on, her thighs bent back, 
resisting in every fibre the dead weight that seeks to 
drag her down to the place to which she has con- 
demned him ! Now the head is over, has vanished, 
bit by bit she lets out the cords that are twisted 
round her hands ; presently they grow slack, a dull 
tremble runs through him, the body has reached the 
ground, she casts the cords in after him, drops the 
trap-door, and all is over. 

So far, she has acted with extraordinary prompti- 
tude and skill, ably seconded by great physical 
strength, she is even able to greet Stephen Croft as if 
nothing had happened, and to wash the cup out of 
which her husband drank ; but in the morning she 
breaks down, and attracts suspicion to herself in a 
way little short of madness. At breakfast she sets 
aside food as if for a visitor, she returns to the house 
after they have both presumably left it for ever, she 
lifts the trap-door, and leaves it open, and from a 
hook inside suspends a long piece of cord, by which 
a person might easily descend to the vault below, or 
ascend from it to the room above. By the trap-door 
she places the plate of broken food, and having thus 
drawn attention to what would have never been sus- 
pected but for her indication, she rejoins her hus- 


i6 


HEDRI. 


band, very soon after committing another and even 
worse act of stupidity, since it is witnessed by one 
who grasps the full significance of the incident, and 
who in following up the clue then given, brings all 
the facts home to the woman at last. 

This gentleman, on reading of the murder, went 
straight to the village of Trevenick, found the police 
supine, and the villagers convinced of Judith’s guilt, 
although they had only their spite to convince them. 
The rural police thought that the man might have 
got in after the two left, and had chosen, for his own 
reasons, to conceal himself below ; but the medical 
evidence proved that he had been dead at least three 
days, and the key was found by the landlord in the 
place agreed upon, while every window was securely 
bolted from within. 

But suspicion was not certainty, or Judith would 
probably have reached Australia unmolested, and 
remained there to this day, had not the stranger who 
travelled with them produced the arsenic box and 
his evidence, at the enquiry then being held. The 
result you know, the woman was brought back and 
committed to prison to await her trial. 

One cannot sufficiently admire the sagacity and 
acumen of this amateur detective who put to shame a 
— but I heard no more. His praise sickened me. I 
no longer felt proud of my work, but as a mean fel- 


HEDRI. 


7 


low who had deliberately hounded down a possibly 
innocent woman. But for my evidence about the 
poison seen in her possession, and that of her hus- 
band (the only being in the world who loved her) 
about the rope, she would be standing a free creature 
in primeval forests now. Why did I put the slum- 
bering police on her track, why cable to the port 
where they landed, and secure her arrest? She had 
done me no harm, nor surely should I have done any 
in leaving that hunted soul one chance of salvation 
and a life with the man who honoured her, the main- 
spring of whose happy existence Avas now as surely 
broken as hers» 


HEDRI, 


i8 


CHAPTER II. 

For an outlawe, this is the lawe 
That men hym take and binde 
Without pitee, hanged to bee 
• And waver with the wynde. 

If I had neede (as God forbide ! ) 

What rescue could ye finde ? ” 

I STOOD still in the Cornish market-place in the 
midst of the Cornish sing-song voices, trying to think 
of any loop-hole by which she might escape, but 
found none ; then I bethought me how abler brains 
than mine would marshall every tittle of evidence in 
her favour, for, I, who had brought her there, could do 
no less than engage one of the most brilliant advo- 
cates in the world to defend her. 

He was probably now speaking, for the burst of 
applause that just now broke forth announced the 
end of the opposing counsel’s speech. 

I went back, found a man holding the court 
breathless, and as I listened, felt my doubts waver 
more and more of her guilt, while a hope began to 
stir in me that she might escape. 

He began by contemptuously dismissing as hyper- 


HEDRI. 


19 


bole, and wild imagination, his learned friend’s 
sketch of what went on in the kitchen of Smugglers’ 
Hole on the night of Seth Treloar’s return. In some 
points that imagination did not carry him far 
enough, for why was not the court treated to a 
description of a man in all the agonies of poison, 
which must have declared itself long before the 
narcotic had time to take effect ? The fisherman 
within ear-shot of the house heard not a sound — not 
even raised voices — and was it for a moment credible 
that a maddened and betrayed man, realising that 
his wife had murdered him, would not have raised a 
cry for help, or uttered a single shriek at the agony 
which devoured his entrails? Such conduct was not 
only incredible, it was physically impossible, and no 
woman, however powerful, could have so strangled 
his furious cries and curses, that not even an echo 
crossed the threshold. The real truth was, that she 
never gave him the ar septic ^ for how, pray, did she 
manage to dissolve it in water before his eyes, then 
add it to the milk, for if .she had merely shaken 
the powder into the cup, it would have risen to the 
surface, and attracted his attention immediately. I 
say that this woman did not touch or see any 
poison, but that she did administer a narcotic she 
had by her, probably with the intention of gaining 
time while he was asleep, to think out her terrible 


20 


HEDRl. 


situation. The sight of the trap-door suggested to 
her mind a hiding-place, and grasping the idea with 
fatal hurry, she did actually, by the exertion' of her 
unusual strength lower him into the vault while he 
was unconscious, in the hope that he would not wake 
before she and Stephen Croft left the house. That 
she had no wish to harm him, is abundantly proved 
by the care with which she managed his descent; 
that she felt sure of his awaking, is proved by the 
rope she affixed to the hook inside the trap- door, 
left purposely open by her that he might see the 
means of ascent, and climb through it. If further 
proof is wanted that her mind was not murderish, 
abundant proof was given by the plate of victuals 
set inside the open trap-door, nay, more, it was the 
good hearted and gentle action by a woman who, 
while nerving herself to an act of force made neces- 
sary by her desperate situation, could think of the 
comfort of the man who had been a brute to her, 
and by such thought prove that she bore no malice 
against him. True, the man’s body contained 
arsenic, but who was to prove that she gave it him } 
He had been in the house three days before he was 
discovered, and what might not have happened in 
that time ? An old enemy might have pursued him 
there, some old companion have followed and quar- 
relled with him in the deserted house, or he might 


HEDRI. 


21 


have died by his own hand ; it was utterly impossible 
to prove that the arsenic found in his body was taken 
from the box subsequently found in her possession. 
More than this — (and^the learned counsel looked 
steadily round the court before advancing his daring 
theory) he would boldly assert that she did not even 
know there was arsenic in the box, it had been 
jerked from the man’s pocket previous to her lower- 
ing him into the vault ; and afterwards in the stress 
and hurry of the moment, she had thrust it into her 
pocket, and forgotten all about it, till she drew it out 
with her handkerchief in the train. 

I saw Judith, whose eyes never left her counsel’s 
face, bow her grand head as if she had said “ Yes, — 
that is true,” and then she turned and laid her hand 
on that of Stephen (whom she could just reach), and 
the utter confidence of the gesture and the look they 
exchanged of pure love, quite apart from passion, 
might have moved the hearts of many who sat 
there. 

“ If” (continued her counsel) “ he carried about 
arsenic, might he not have had more with him, or at 
any rate enough to take his own life? True, his 
arms were bound, but who was to prove that the 
prisoner bound them ? They may have been bound 
and unbound a dozen times in that deserted place 
where no villagers ever came, and that stood as much 


22 


HEDRL 


alone as if it were a hundred miles from a human 
habitation. Then, if antecedents went for anything, 
where could a woman be found with more blameless 
ones than this } Even her drunken scoundrel of a 
husband was not neglected or deserted by her, and 
when she was left alone, - in the full flower of her 
magnificent beauty, her name was never lightly 
coupled with any man’s, and she was ashamed of no 
work, however lowly, by which she might keep her- 
self from beggary, or the pauper’s home. It was 
only when the sum of years that are supposed to 
constitute legal death had elapsed, that she chose for 
a husband a man of character as pure as her own, 
and as you may see, a man physically her match, and 
though the spite and venom of their neighbours may 
have affected to consider the bond between them 
illegal, they were unquestionably in the sight of man 
and God, husband and wife. 

“Could such a woman’s nature change all at once, 
could her veneration for all things holy, all things of 
good repute, fail her utterly in the one supreme 
moment of her lifej when she found her heaven sud- 
denly transformed into hell ? Was yonder the 
woman to boldly conceive and execute a murder 
with a skill and rapidity that the most experienced 
criminal might have envied, and striven to imitate in 
vain.? No! That she had displayed extraordinary 


HEDRL 


23 


nerve and resource in carrying out a wrong act, he 
fuHy admitted ; but when one comes to think of the 
immensity of the stakes involved, of what life in 
bondage meant with this man, of what love in free- 
dom awaited her in the new world, you may condemn 
her, but you cannot wonder that she snatched at 
any means, however unlawful, by which to save her- 
self. 

“ I contend ilien, that there is no case against this 
woman, and that each and all of you, gentlemen of 
the jury, will be guilty of murder if you send this 
innocent and sorely tried creature to the gallows ! ” 

He sat down amidst applause from the legal 
fraternity, and strangers present, but low murmurs 
and growls of dissent rose from the fishermen and 
their wives in the body of the court. 

“Who else had a motive in getting rid of Seth 
Treloar And motive was everything in murder! 
Why was the door found locked, and every window 
fastened from inside (for hadn’t some of them prowled 
round to see after the pair left), and the key found 
hanging in the place the landlord and Croft had 
agreed on } Didn’t the doctors say he had been 
dead a good three days, and how could he have 
poisoned himself when his arms were fastened to his 
sides with cords ? Wouldn’t an artful jade like 
her have tied a rope to the hook, and put the food 


HEDRl. 


24 

there, just to make people think she expected him to 
get up again ? Wasn’t his face fixed in the most 
awful look of hungry agony, more like a famine- 
struck wolf than a human being ? Only to dream 
of it was to lie awake all night afterwards.” 

And then the Cornish sing-song of bitter tongues 
ceased as the first witness was called for the prosecu- 
tion — Stephen Croft. 

I have said that he and Judith made the hand- 
somest pair I ever saw in my life, but the man’s 
beauty was the more pre-eminent of the two. 

Save in sculptured images of Antinous, whom he 
most curiously resembled, alike in feature and the 
sweetness tinged with melancholy of his expression, 
I never saw anything in the least like him, and from 
the crown of close sunny curls on his splendid head 
to the sole of the finely shaped foot, he looked a 
man who would wear a fisherman’s dress or a king’s 
robe with equal grace and dignity. No wonder, 
thought I, that the women of the village hated Judith 
— I saw evil looks pass among them as Stephen’s 
blue eyes sought hers as he left her to take his place. 

And now she stood alone, and the man who loved 
her was on oath to give evidence against her. 

And surely this was a cruel thing to see, for had 
he been the woman’s husband, the law would have 
closed his lips, so that he might neither help to save 
nor to hang her; but Seth Treloar’s return had 


HEDRL 


25 

broken the tie between them, and she was no more 
than any other stranger to him in the eyes of the law. 
' He made no ado about kissing the book, but when 
the first damning question was heard, I saw him set 
his teeth hard, and his mouth and jaw hardened. 
Stock still he stood, looking at the man who ad- 
dressed him, but not one syllable passed his lips. 

The question was repeated, this time angrily, but 
not even a shade of expression crossed Stephen 
Croft s features in reply, neither sullen nor obstinate 
did he look, but simply a man who had made his 
mind up, and who would not unmake it for all the 
applied force in the world. 

He did not look at Judith, even when “ Do ’ee 
spake now ! ” broke from her lips, and silent as a 
stone he stood through the war of words that raged 
around him, silent when the Judge addressed him 
with no unkindly words, before committing him to 
prison for contempt of court, urging him to answer, 
as the admissions he had previously made about the 
prisoner had been duly taken down, and his silence 
now could not affect her one way or the other. But 
the fair Greek lines of his face never yielded in a 
single line, until just before his removal, then a pang 
crossed it, as he realised that he would no longer be 
able to stand beside Judith, and with an earnest 
“ Keep a good heart, my lass ! ” and a look of love 
transfiguring his face, he caught her “ God bless 
thee, Steve ! ” as he was led out. 


26 


HEDRI. 


CHAPTER III. 

“ For had ye, lo ! an hundred mo’, 

Yet wolde I be that one ; 

For in my mynde, of all mankynde 
I love but you alone.” 

Her face changed as he disappeared, for a 
moment an almost childish look of loneliness per- 
vaded her figure, then she drew herself together, and 
looked as strong and serene as before. 

More triumph shone in her eyes, and she glanced 
at the spiteful women in the body of the court with 
almost a smile on her lips. Was he not faithful, her 
man who would not break his oath, but who was 
content to suffer imprisonment rather than give wit- 
ness against her } 

Then the notes taken down of her husband’s ad- 
missions, clearly wrung from him in his agony, were 
read aloud, but still the brightness of her face did 
not change. 

Jake George was the next witness called, a striking 
contrast to the silent, splendid man who had faced 
the court a few minutes ago, and whose volubility 
was far more irritating than Stephen’s dumbness had 
been. 


HEDRI. 


27 


Jake was the husband and tool of the most bitter- 
tongued shrew in the village, and as her mouth-piece 
could have poured out his venom upon Judith by the 
hour, had he not been smartly checked, and brought 
to book by his questioner. Shorn of irrevelancies 
and spite, his story was this : 

“ His business took him close to Smugglers’ Hole 
on a certain night, or perhaps he was only passing it, 
any way when he saw a man dressed in a pilot coat, 
outside clothes he should describe as ‘ fancy,’ dodg- 
ing about outside the house, making as if he were in 
doubt whether to go in or not ; he stopped to see 
what it all meant, and presently the man lifted the 
latch and went in, shutting the door behind him. 
Asked if he peeped, Jake boldly admitted that he 
did, but couldn’t see so much as her shoe-string, the 
blinds were down, but he could make out the glint of 
a fire through it, and catch the sound of voices. His 
wife had always said that Judith would be caught 
one of these days, and only behaved herself because 
folks were looking, and at the time he didn’t think 
the man was up to any good there, after dark, and 
with such queer rags. He hadn’t seen his face, and 
didn’t think of Seth Treloar. Didn’t stay at the 
window long for fear Steve Croft should come back 
and catch him there, but thought he’d stop and see 
the game out. Sat down by the cliff, a bit of a 


28 


HEDRL 


way off — may be a hundred yards, and stayed there 
till Steve came home. Nobody came out during 
that time, and he went down to the village, riled at 
wasting so much time for nothing. Told his wife 
and she was angry. She liked a story with a tail to 
it — and this hadn’t got one, and he thought no more 
of it till the landlord found a man’s body in the 
house.” 

The owner of Smuggler’s Folly next entered the 
box. He was a stout and prosperous man, who also 
owned the “ Chough and Crow,” and was not depen- 
dent on his nets for a living. 

He said that he was from home when his tenants 
left, and on his return he went to the house, and 
found the key in a hiding-place upon which he and 
Stephen Croft had previously agreed. On entering 
the house, though the blind was down, he noticed at 
once the open trap-door, and the plate of broken 
victuals beside it. He let the daylight in, and look- 
ing down though the open square in the floor, saw a 
heap of something lying about twenty feet below, 
but not until he had obtained a candle, discovered 
that it was the body, lying face downwards, of a man. 
He procured help and a ladder, by the aid of which 
he descended, but had some difficulty in lifting the 
corpse, as its hands, dug deeply into the mould, had 
stiffened there, while his teeth literally bit the dust. 


HEDRI, 


29 


The expression of his features was less one of pain 
than of intense hunger, though his body was well 
nourished, and his clothes, made in the fashion of 
some foreign country, spoke of his prosperity. Below 
the chest, and across the arms was secured the rope 
by which he had evidently been lowered from above 
(but cross-questioned on this point, witness admitted 
that the rope was not tightly drawn,.so that a power- 
ful man might easily struggle or jerk himself out of 
it), a portion of similar rope being secured to a strong 
hook just beside the trap-door. His own impression 
at the time was, that somebody had dragged and 
hidden him there, arranging for his escape when he 
came to himself, and even providing him with food 
to eat when he came to. Thought the man died of 
heart seizure, or visitation of God, or of fright, till 
the coroner’s inquest proved that he died of poison. 
Was astonished to find that food was found in his 
stomach, from his look he would have thought he 
had been slowly perishing of famine for days. Saw 
a bottle of stuff in the cupboard that smelt of 
narcotic ; was aware that the secret of making it was 
known to a few women in the village, that it was 
decocted out of herbs, and that its strength rather 
increased than waned with years. Had heard it 
said (though he didn’t listen to gossip) that Judith 
had more than once given a dose of it to Seth Tre- 


30 


HEDRL 


loar, when he was in one of his mad-drunk furies, 
but that he never guessed it, only fell asleep and woke 
in a better temper. That was the only bit of scandal 
he had ever heard about her. Even now he didn’t 
believe her guilty, though facts might be against her.” 

When the burly fisherman left the box, he left a 
distinct impression of good sense and good feeling, 
and some of those present muttered that he should 
have been called as a witness for the defence, and 
not for the prosecution. 

The doctor’s evidence was short, and to the point. 
In Seth Treloar’s body he had found enough arsenic 
to kill three or four people, and traces of a powerful 
narcotic that would have the effect of cutting short 
his agony after swallowing the poison, so that he 
would actually die without pain, and unconscious. 

Cross-examined as to whether a man who had 
swallowed a deadly irritant would be likely to refrain 
from crying out. Dr. Trevelyan said it would be most 
unlikely, even with a man of severe self-discipline and 
iron will, and in the last degree improbable with an 
ignorant and notoriously passionate man. Short of 
a blow that would have instantly stunned him (of 
which there was no trace) he could not have escaped 
the severest agonies immediately after swallowing the 
doubly hocussed drink, which, by the w^ay, he must 
have tossed off at a draught. The man had been 


HEDRL 


31 


dead over three days when Lo saw him, and he could 
not account for the wolfish look of hunger in his face, 
for in his stomach was a large quantity of undigested 
food, indicating that he had eaten heavily shortly 
before he drank the fatal cup. The body was 
extremely well nourished, the skin and hair remark- 
ably sleek and glossy, the complexion clear, while 
the solidity of the flesh spoke to excellent powers of 
digestion. He looked a man in the very prime of 
life who might have lived to be old hut for the acci- 
dent that cut short his existence.” 

When Dr. Trevelyan left the box, I knew that 
here again was a witness whose evidence was dis- 
tinctly in favour of Judith, and how, but for me, the 
case against her must inevitably have broken down. 

And then my name was called, and when I left 
the witness-box, I knew by the faces of the jurymen 
that Judith "was virtually a condemned woman. 


32 


UEDRL 


CHAPTER IV. 

Balow, my child. I’ll weep for thee 
Too soon, a lake, thou’lt weep for me ! 

Born to sustain thy mother’s shame, 

A hapless fate, a bastard’s name.” , 

That night I made no pretence of going to bed. I 
could not sleep with that death-cry of “ Guilty ! ” 
ringing in my ears, and the twelve stolid, stupid faces 
of the men who had returned the verdict would have 
stared me into madness had I closed my eyes. 

They had not hesitated at all, and only one gave 
her the benefit of a doubt ; they looked solely to 
motive and to the enormous stakes involved to the 
woman, and they quietly rode rough-shod over Jake’s 
evidence, and that of the Doctor, and having pro- 
nounced her guilty went home comfortably to the 
dowdy wives, who one and all believed a superlatively 
handsome young woman to be the off-spring of the 
devil. The men might have felt lenient to a 
woman who killed her lover rather than offend a 
husband ; but to kill a man she had sworn to honour 
and obey, touched them very nearly, and each slept 


HEDRL 


33 


that night feeling that his day's work was a shining 
encouragement to virtue. 

Perhaps Judith, too, slept well, all her hopes and 
fears over ; but Stephen, once more at liberty, rested 
as little as I did, or I was much mistaken. Was he 
cursing me for the cruel part I had played, and him- 
self for that fatal admission about the cord, and the 
even more damning one of her return to the house. It 
is an awful thought, that one has helped to adjust the 
noose about the neck that is the dearest in the 
world to you. One falls to asking God why he did not 
strike us with palsy e’er we pronounced the words 
why he did not strike us dead before we rose a wit- 
ness against that we would have been martyred tp 
save. 

The bold theory of Judith’s counsel had greatly 
impressed me, though to the jury it had sounded as 
the merest romance. I had watched her while 
he spoke, and every feature of her face bore witness 
to the truth of his guess, nay, there had been a look 
almost of fear in her eyes, as if she suspected him of 
some devilry in describing correctly what he could 
not possibly have seen. 

But more than all, I believed in the lightning con- 
viction that had come home to me, born of some- 
thing indescribable in herself, that of folly and to 
spare, she had been guilty, but of deliberate murder, 
3 


34 


. HEDRI. 


not even in thought. Long before morning dawned, 
after I had minutely gone over the heavy indictment 
against her, I knew surely that these twelve men 
had blundered, and that I had blundered worse than 
any one of them, though there might be no vestige 
of evidence to prove to us our mistake. 

But proved it must be, and that verdict reversed, 
or I should be a haunted and miserable man to the 
day of my death. 

And how If Judith had refused to speak one 
word for herself up to the present time, would she 
be willing to speak now, ' when nothing that she 
could say or do would avail her } Knowing the use- 
lessness of speech, she had proudly refrained from it, 
and I greatly admired her silence, even though, if 
persevered in, it would effectually baulk my efforts 
to save her. 

Seth Treloar died of poison, it is true, but not 
administered by her hand, nor did she know by 
whose, and probably no one ever would know. If 
the dead could speak, it would clear her, but for the 
living to try and prove the truth was about as hope- 
less and impossible a task as was ever set to a pur- 
blind, miserable man. 

Yet I resolved (unchecked by my recent disas- 
trous failure that the world crowned with success) to 
devote myself during the next two months to search- 


HEDRI. 


35 


ing for the real factor concerned in Seth Treloar’s 
death. Two months — for within a month Judith 
would be mother to Stephen Croft’s child, and the 
law allowed her a further period of life before her 
execution. 

I remembered how the expression of her face in 
the train, at the sight of the arsenic-box, was less 
horror than blank astonishment, and how her im- 
pulse to snatch, and throw away what caused her 
husband intense pain, was a perfectly natural one, 
and no proof of guilt as I and others had supposed. 
One thought alone still disturbed me. Why had 
she returned pale and terror-struck after visiting 
the house on the morning of her departure } Was it 
not the same expression on her face, the expression 
of guilt, that had struck me so vividly the moment I 
saw her "i 

But I thrust the doubt away, and resolved that on 
the morrow I would go to her, and implore her to 
tell me what had passed between the hours of seven 
and eight on that evening at Smugglers’ Hole, and 
soothed by the determination, my head fell forward 
on my arms, and in the morning light I slept. 


36 


HEDRL 


CHAPTER V. 

“ Yet I am sure, of one pleasure 
And, shortly, it is this : 

That where ye be, me seemth perdi 
I could not fare amysse.” 

As I turned in at the gaol-gates, I knocked against 
Stephen Croft coming out, his face dulled and wrung 
with disappointment. I guessed that he had been 
refused admittance to Judith, and this I thought 
inhuman, even if she had been the guiltiest wretch 
alive, and had lived with him of choice as his mis- 
tress, when in truth she had believed herself to be his 
wife. . ■ * 

“ Come with me,” I said, “ and I will try to per- 
suade the governor to let you in with me.” 

He could not change the look of hate that came 
always into his eyes when he saw me, but he followed 
me like a patient dog, and after some difficulty I got 
the required permission, and these two, to whom 
each made the whole world of the other, were face 
to face. 

For a while I was deaf and blind to them, but 
presently I said : 


HEDRI. 


37 


“Judith, I believe you are an innocent woman -r- 
tell me if what I believe is the truth.” 

The scorn in Judith’s eyes was boundless as the 
sea, but she remained silent ; it was the man who 
spoke. 

“ Nobbut a fool 'ud iver ha’ doubted her,” he said. 

This was a strong speech from a man of Stephen’s 
gentle character, and I found the two pairs of brown 
and blue eyes hard to meet. 

“ And I was that fool,” I said ; “ but before God I 
will undo my folly if I can.” 

“ Naw,” he said sadly, “ ’ee canst ne’er do that. 
’Tis thou has wove the strands aboot her bonnie 
neck, an’ all ’cos ’ee must blab to what warn’t no 
business o’ thine. An’ I wish my tongue was rotted 
i’ my head afore I’d spoke them words as war brought 
up agen her arterwards — but ’twas thy wark, man, a’ 
thy wark.” 

Judith turned and kissed passionately the mouth 
that had ignorantly borne testimony against her. 

“ I’d rayther ha’ a curse from this wan — the on’y 
wan — than th’ luv o’ all the world,” she cried ; and he 
kissed her back with all his heart. 

As on the first occasion of my hearing her speak, 
the woman’s voice jarred upon me; she looked a 
Semiramis, and she spoke like a daughter of the peo- 
ple. 


38 


HEDRI. 


“Judith,” I said, “your counsel imagined certain 
things to have occurred on the night Seth Treloar 
came home. Did he guess truly t ” 

She looked at me indifferently. 

“ Iss,” she said, “ but what do’t siggerfy naw } Tis 
all adone wi’, an’ yo’d take me fo’ a fool if I up an’ 
told ’ec th’ truth.” 

“ No, I should not,” I said ; “ and what is more, I 
should believe you. I want to help you, but you 
must help yourself by telling me exactly what hap- 
pened that night.” 

Judith looked at Stephen. 

“ Shall I tell ’un ” she said. “ M’appen him ’ull 
know then what a fule ’un has been. Iss, I’ll tell ’ee, 
tho’ ’tis waste o’ time, an’ I’d rayther be talkin’ to 
him, yon. 

“ Wa-al, I war sittin’ by th’ fire th’ nicht afore we 
was t’ sail fo’ Australy, thinkin’ o’ my baw, an’ a bit 
fainty^hearted at leavin’ th’ old place (us had been 
main happy, hadn’t us, lad) ? when steps corned along 
th’ path an’ somebody gie’d a bang at th’ door. I 
s’posed ’twas some giglet or rapskallion corned fro’ th’ 
village t’ jeer at me, so I jist bided quiet, then a body 
swored out, an’ in come a man — ’twar Seth Treloar. 

“ I gied a yellock ’ee moight ha’ heard a moile, an’ 
him jest larfs an’ ses, ‘ Your’m purtier nor iver ! ’ an’ 
ups t’ kiss me. ‘ If ’ee touches me,’ ses I, ‘ I’ll murder 


HEDRI. 


39 


’ec/ an' he larfs agen, an’ ses, ‘ I sec yer temper’s so 
sweet as ever ’twas,’ an’ him thrawed hisself into a 
chair, an’ keeps on larfin’.” 

“ ‘ I ’spected to find ’ee married agen,’ him said, ‘ th’ 
seven year is up, an’ you^ free, ’sposin’ we’m ony 
brother an’ sister t’ wan anither now ? ’ 

‘ Wi’ a’ my heart,’ say I, strainin’ my ears fo’ th» 
sound o’ Steve’s han upo’ th’ latch. I knowed I war 
thrust out o’ my bit hebben into hell 

“ ‘ If ’ee means that,’ ses he, lookin’ -hard towards 
me, ^ us’ll be the boonist frens as ever war. Thar’s 
a baw out yon in Styria as clapped his eyes on yer 
picter, an’ he be jest mad about ’ee, an’ when I tells 
’um you’m my sister, he ups and swares to marryin’ 
’ee, and gi’es me no pace till I sets out to fetch ’ee. 
Will ’ee come } ’Ee ’ll have gold an’ fine do’ an’ 
sich lashins as 'ee never see the like o’ here, an’ e’s a 
fine baw, as ’ull be good to ’ee, a sight better’n I iver 
war.’ 

“ I said niver a word, I war just listenin’, listenin’ 
for Stephen’s steps. 

“ ‘ Wa-al,’ he ses ‘ we’ll talk more o’ that bim’by. 
I doant look much loike th’ ragged ne’er-do-weel as 
runned away fro ’ee, do I } Awh, t’is a foin life out 
yon in Styria, all the baws is lusty an’ strong over 
there. Jes look to this!’ An’ he rolled ups his 
furrin’ sleeve, an’ showed a arm as ’ud flummax an 


ox. 


40 


HEDRI. 


‘ Us don’t drink much over thar,’ sez he, w’ a 
curous sort o’ larf, ^ us knows o’ somethin’ better stuff 
as you poor fules ’ud reckon as a bit different to what 
us dus, stuff as makes ’ee strong, an’ yer skin sleek, 
an’ yer hair t’ shine, but I ain’t a goin’ t’ tell ’ee wot 
t’ is. Has ’ee got a drink o’ milk anywheres ? ’ 

Iss,’ ses I, listenin’ for th’ sound o’ Steve’s foot, 
an’ I wraps my cloak closer about me, an’ I goes t’ 
th’ cupboard, an’ thar th’ devil war waitin’ fo’ me, as 
’t is aisy now t’ see. 

“ Fo’ thar, roight a facin’ me war th^ bottle o’ sleep- 
in’ stuff as ’ud stood all them seven year ; I’d kep it 
t’ mind me o’ th’ hell I’d lived in w’ Seth, an’ side o’ 
the stuff war the milk, an’ the cup out o’ which Steve 
had drunk that day. 

“ Th’ devil ses ‘ Pit some o’ th’ stuff i’ his drink, an’ 
he’ll niver knaw, an’ git him out o’ th’ way afore 
Steve be corned in.’ Thar war na taste to ’t, nor 
more nor watter, nor na color, th’ gipsies knawed 
thar work too well fo’ that, an’ wi’ my back t’ Seth, I 
jest poured th’ stuff into th’ cup, an’ th’ milk to top 
o’ un, an’ I ups an’ gies ’t to ’un, d’reckly.’^ 

“ There was no water in the cupboard } ” I said. 

'‘Watter.?” said Judith, staring at me, “what 
for should I keep watter there .? Wa-al, him. 
tossed ’t off to wance, an’ afore ’ee could count 
ten, him war asleep an’ snorin’, and out he slips 


HEDRI, 


41 


fro’ th’ chair to th’ groun’, an’ a box falls out o’ his 
bosom, an’ I picks ’t up (listenin’ the whiles fo’ 
Steve’s step) an’ puts it i’ my pocket, an’ thin, knaw- 
in’ he war safe naw for twenty-vour hour. I looks at 
un and ses, Whereiver num I hide un ? ’ 

“ Thcr warth’ secret bit room, on’y Steve alius went 
thar when he corned in, an’ I daurna pit him on th’ 
cliff. Jes thin my eye catched th’ ring o’ th’ trap- 
door, an’ th’ devil flashed it up t’ me, ‘ Put un down 
i’ th’ cellar ! ’Ee’ll be gone in twelve hour, an’ nuth- 
in’ ’ull waken he fur twenty-vour, put un down i’ th’ 
cellar!’ 

“ If th’ devil war quick, I war quicker, I catched up 
a coil o’ rope near by, an’ I had Seth Treloar roun’ 
the shoulders i’ a second, an’ tied a knot ahind him, 
an’ then I dragged un along th’ floor till I’d got un 
to th’ trap-door, an’ opened un, but t’warnt so easy 
to let down ; an’ when I’d pushed his. feet over, I 
knewed I’d got so difflcult a job as air a woman had. 

“ I was boun’ to take time,, if I’d pushed un too 
quick, him ud ha’ bin killed to wance (an’ a’ th’ time 
I war listenin’ for Steve’s step) so I giv’ un a bit 
push, then rinnedback an’ jest dug my feet i’ th’ 
floor an’ thrawed mysell till I war slantin’ like a tree 
i’ a storm, but th’ dead weight o’ un’s body as him 
slipped thro’ th’ trap-door nigh pulled me arter un, 
but I jest held on, an’ lettin un down a inch at a 


42 


HEDRL 


time, bimby I felt un touch th’ groun’, thin I dashes 
th’ rope in arter un an bangs down th’ door jest at 
th’ very moment as Steve lifts th’ latch, an^ corned in. 

“ I thrawed my apron over my head so as un could- 
na see my face, an’ thinkin’ I war frettin’ anent 
leavin’, he lets me alone, an’ bimeby us has supper 
thcgither an’ so th’ evenin’ passed.” 

“And you could eat, drink and sleep, with that 
drugged man lying near in the vault at your feet ? ” 
I cried. 

“ Iss,” said Judith, whose homely words and accent 
afforded the strongest contrast to the grandeur of 
her looks and gestures, “ what harm had I done ’un } 
Him ’ud ha’ woke up none th’ wurse for what I’d 
gived ’un, as him had niver been th’ wurse afore 
(often as he’d tooked ’t unbeknown t’ hisself), an’ 
thar war no rats below, an’ th’ place war dry an’ 
sandy, an’ I knawed he’d come to na harm. Yet I 
seemed feared like to rejoice too much, to git 'safe 
away wi’ Steve ’ud be too much joy, an’ as things 
corned out,” she added bitterly, “ ’t war well I didna 
count my chickens too soon; I warnt to knaw as 
there war a fule wanderin’ about th’ warld meddlin’ 
wi’ things as God A’mighty didna mean to meddle in. 
He’d jest hev let ’em ravel themselves out, but you 
be wiser nor he, tho’ naw you’d like t’ undo th’ piece 
o’ wark you’m made.” 


HEDRL 


43 


She paused a momient, and a rush of pain swept 
over her face as if some physical agony pressed her 
hard. 

“ Has ’ee thort ’o ’t ? ” she cried, “ o’ th’ little un — 
Steve’s an’ mine — how ’t ’ull grow up wi’ out a 
mother, an’ be ’shamed t’ speak her name when it be 
old ’nuff t’ knaw ? Eh, my lad (she put her hand 
on Steve’s), an’ us waited so lang, and o’ our bit o’ 
happiness wi’ wan anither, we luv’d fu’ money a year 
afore us iver spoke but wi’ our eyes, ay, ’ee luv’d me 
when I war th’ sport o’ that ne’er-do-weel, Seth Tre- 
loar, an’ I war iver comparin’ the twa o’ ’ee i’ my 
mind. An’ t’ see ’ee war like a blink o’ heaven, us 
niver got no nearer, but us war heartened up t’ walk 
th’ stony road apart, an’ ’ee passed a’ th’ lasses by, 
but when th’ seven year war up, ’ee jest sed t’ me, 
‘ You’m mine naw, Judith,’ an’ I went to ’ee like a 
bird.” 

The helpless love, the profound dependence on 
him that spoke in her voice, moved me deeply. 

If ever a woman by her misfortunes had merited 
some taste of happiness, that woman, who looked 
made for love, was Judith, and yet she had but 
sipped the draught before it was dashed from her 
lips for ever. 

She left her arm on Stephen’s neck, then pulled 
herself together, and went on with her story. 


44 


HEDRI. 


“ When mornin’ corned, Steve an’ me war stirrin’ 
early, an’ whiles I got th’ breakfast, him put up our 
bits o’ things, an’ then ’un couldna’ guess wheriver th’ 
coil o’ rope war gotten to. 

“ Whiles I war eatin’, I ses to mysel’, ‘ Seth Treloar 
’ull be hungry when ’un comes t’ hisself,’ an’ I set a 
bit o’ bread an’ fish t’ one side, an’ soon arter us 
locked th’ docJr ahind us, an’ war gone for iver, so 
Steve "sposed, fro’ th’ place whar I’d bin th’ miser- 
ablest an’ th’ happiest woman upo’ airth. 

“ But so soon as we’m got a bit forrards, ses I to 
Steve, ‘ I’ve forgotten somethin’, an’ must rin back,’ 
an’ for sure I did rin, an’ catched up th’ key ra’ th 
bush, oped th’ house place, an’ puts th’ plate o’ 
victuals side o’ th’ trap-door, an’ opens ’t ’an sees 
th’ rope hangin’ to a staple as th’ men used t’ climb 
up by. An’ thin I looks at Seth, lyin’ still as th’ 
dead, an’ all to wance it corned upo’ me the sinfu’ 
thing I’d adone, an’ I ses to mysel’ ‘ ’Sposin’ him war 
niver to wake up 1 Or if ’un do, ’t ’ull be dead dark, 
an’ him war alius a coward, like t’ most bulllies, an’ 
’sposin’ ’un dies o’ fright 1 ’ 

“ Someways I felt as if I war leavin’ ’un to his 
death, an’ yet I hadna got th’ sperrit t’ go to Steve’ 
an’ say, ‘ Go yer ways, an’ leave me an’ th’ child as 
is cornin’, t’ th’ marcy o’ Seth Treloar!’ So I jes 
stole away, but I left my innicence ahind me, an’ I 


HEDRL 


45 


niver knawed a moment more o’ peace fro’ that day 
t’ this. 

“Wa-al, you was i’ th’ train, ’ee knaws how 1 
looked, an’ ’ee saw th’ box o’ poison skip out o’ my 
pocket. I’d niver gi’en ’t a thought since I picked ’un 
up when ’t failed out o’ Seth’s bosom. An’ naw I’ve 
told ’ee th’ truth, an’ nuthin’ but th’ wan truth, but 
’ee ’ll niver make anythin’ o’ ’t. Nicht an’ day I’ve 
toiled t’ puzzle ’t out, but no wan ’ull iver knaw th’ 
truth ’bout Seth Treloar’s death, ’ceptin’ Seth Treloar 
hisself.’^ 

“ He died of a dose of arsenic, sufficient to kill 
three men,” I said, “ as the post-mortem proved, also 
that there was no bruise upon him, or any disease 
whatever to cause death.” 

“ Iss,” said Judith, looking at me from beneath 
those grand bent brows of hers, and with the divine 
stamp of truth on her lips and in her eyes, “ ’tis that 
beats me. Him war alive an’ well when I put ’un in 
th’ cellar, him war found jest as I’d left ’un, bound 
safe ’nuff, an’ dead, three days arter. But what for 
did ’un carry a box o’ poison } Furrin’ folks has out- 
landish ways, ’sposin’ him used th’ stuff as a medicine 
like, summut as I’ve heerd tell doctors gives poison 
t’ sick folk t’ make ’un well } ” 

Doctors only give very small doses,” said I, “be- 
sides, if Seth Treloar had been in the habit of taking 


46 


HEDRL 


it, why should he die of a dose of it then ? He had 
no desire whatever to die, he was prosperous, healthy, 
he possessed money, was engaged in schemes to make 
himself richer, and you may take it for granted that 
he did not die of his own free will. Witness his 
attitude when found, the agony of his face, the evi- 
dence of his struggles, ignorant in the dark of the 
means of life and escape close to his hand,” 

“I canna argify’t,” said Judith wearily, “’tis all 
dark t’ me, o’ny I knaws Tse as innocent o' his death 
as you be, but I’ll die fo’t all th' same.” 

“ Men have died before now by the Visitation of 
God,” I said slowly, “ that mysterious death which 
comes swift as lightning, but, unlike the lightning, the 
Divine hand striking out of the darkness leaves no 
trace.” 

“ Iss,” said Judith, “ I see’d sich a wan once. Her 
lookt as if her’d failed asleep, poor sawl, an’ purtier 
nor ever her did in life. Seth Treloar niver died 
that death, but how 'un died for sure none but him 
an' God A’mighty ’ull iver knaw.” 

“ Could he have had an enemy } ” I said as one 
thinking aloud, “ some one who followed him here, 
and gave him the poison ? ” 

Judith shook her head. 

“ It arn't possible,” she said ; “ by th’ doctor’s 'count 
he died somewheres i’ th’ night artcr I corned away, 


HEDRI. 


47 


an’ th’ locks an’ window war safe, an’ nobody knawed 
whar we’d put th’ key. M’appen you’m none so 
much t’ blame fo’ yer thoughts o’ me, thar’s but wan 
i’ th’ wide warld (she kissed Stephen’s brown hand) 
as knaws I speak the truth.” 

“No, I believe you too,” I said, but without hope, 
for there was no hope in me. 

And then I turned my back on the pair, bidding 
them make their farewells, and presently I called the 
turnkey, and soon found myself in the fresh air with 
leisure in which to ponder over those things that I 
had heard. 


48 


HEDRI, 


CHAPTER VI. 

“ Who saws thro’ the trunk, tho’ he leave the tree up in the forest, 
When the next wind cuts it down — is his not the hand that smote it ? ” 

In town I consulted the man who had the most 
experience of criminals, and criminal trials of any 
man living, and I told him the story of Judith from 
first to last, and asked his opinion. 

“ I believe she is innocent,” I said, “ do you ? ” 

Mr. Gillett answered my question with another, 
and several to follow ; when I had replied, he took a 
pinch of snuff in his usual and well-known manner, 
then said, 

“ The woman has lied from beginning to end. She 
is a handsome woman ? ” 

“ The handsomest I ever saw in my life.” 

“H’m — that explains your qualms at having brought 
your Jezebel to justice. Not but what it must have 
been a great temptation, enormous, to have an 
empty cellar at her feet in which to hide her degen- 
erated Enoch. The sole point in her favor is the 
evidence of the man outside the cottage that night, 
who did not hear such cries as you might expect a 
man to give forth when he found that he had been 
experimented on with arsenic. Does he happen to 
h^deaf?*^ 


HEDRL 


49 


Mr. Gillett was leaning forward, a pinch of snuff 
between finger and thumb that would not be carried 
to his impatient nose till he got my answer. 

“ In the witness-box he did not appear to be so,” I 
said, “ but the court was exceedingly small, and he 
was very near the Judge.” 

“ Find out, and let me know,” said Mr. Gillett, 
snuffing with energy, “ and also the exact distance he 
can hear from, and how far he was from the cottage 
door ; if he didn’t hear the cries of Treloar because 
he couldiit, then the last hope of the woman’s inno- 
cence is gone. Every other point against her is con- 
clusive — the administered drug — ” 

“ Stop,” I cried, “ there is a total absence of proof 
that she did administer it. Remember that arsenic 
must first be dissolved for some minutes before it 
could pass unobserved in a drink of any sort ; it 
would have floated to the surface if she had thrown 
it hastily in, and she gave him the drink he asked 
for so quickly that she did not even raise his suspi- 
cions.” 

So she says,” remarked Mr. Gillett, “ but then 
the only man that would contradict her is dead.” 

“ I wish you had heard her,” I cried ; the unvar- 
nished simplicity of her story, no flights of tall talk, 
no heroics, or seeking after effect, but just as a child 
entirely without imagination would repeat what he 
had actually seen.” 


4 


50 


HEDRI. 


“Very clever,” said Mr. Gillett, nodding; “those 
stolid, uneducated people are wonderfully cunning. I 
was saying, but you cut me short, there is the fact of 
the administered poison, certainly not by himself, for 
the man was full of life, health and hope, with a large 
sum of money, too, ready to his hand ; then there is 
the woman’s own confession of having drugged and 
bound him — a pretty high-handed proceeding for an 
innocent woman ; there is the evidence furnished by 
his body, and above and beyond everything is the 
motive^ the over-mastering motive she had for making 
away with the man. 

“ She must be a fine woman, a very fine woman ; 
her muscular development must be of the highest 
order, while her powers of lying are also extremely 
brilliant. But if my old friend, Dolliman, one of the 
ablest men alive, couldn’t alter facts so as to win her 
case. I’m afraid her unsupported testimony won’t go 
for much. She is evidently a consummate liar who 
will probably go on lying to the end of her life.” 

“ But the food she placed beside the trap-door,” 
I urged, “ why should she do that if she did not expect 
him to waken 1 ” 

“To disarm suspicion, or to gratify one of those 
insane impulses that often undo a clever criminal’s 
most skilful work. Had she not left the food there, 
or had she even replaced the trap-door, probably the 


HEDRL 


51 

murder would not have been discovered to this 
day. You would have forgotten the incident of the 
arsenic-box in the train, had not the papers pointed 
her out to you as the probable person who was 
‘ wanted ’ for the murder.” 

“ No,” I said, “ I should never have forgotten the 
incident, or the woman.” 

Mr. Gillett looked shrewdly at me as he manipu- 
lated his last pinch before dismissing me, then he 
smiled. 

“ Mr. Varennes,” he said, “ what possessed you to 
go in for the post of amateur defective } ” 

I shook my head. 

“ I can’t tell,” I said, “ I felt impelled to act as I 
did in this affair, and now I would give half of all I 
possess in the world to undo my work.” 

“ I have heard,” said Mr. Gillett, “ that, about 
women, there is nothing to beat an old fool, unless it 
be a young one. Now, my own opinion is, that the 
middle-aged fool beats the other two hollow. No 
offence — we’re old friends, you know — and let me 
know if that man is deaf, or not. I only wish to 
know as a matter of curiosity, for you can do nothing. 
No one could save the woman now.” 

Could they not.^ As I went back to Trevenick 
that night I swore that I would try. 

And yet, if, instead of going to an expert of the 


52 


HEDRI. 


law, I had gone to an expert in medicine, who had 
read an account of some amazing revelations made 
by two men (introduced by Dr. Knapps, practising 
in Styria) at Gratz in 1875, I should have made a 
discovery, that I afterwards went through a veritable 
martyrdom of body and spirit to obtain. 


HEDRI, 


53 


CHAPTER VII. 

O, man ! thou vessel purposeless, unmeant. 

Yet drone — hive strange of phantom purposes ! ” 

Smuggler’s Hole was empty, as it had been ever 
since its landlord discovered an unlooked-for tenant, 
and when I told the worthy man I would take it for 
three months at a liberal rent, he scratched his head, 
and clearly thought me mad. 

He showed me over the two rooms of which the 
place consisted, sordid and mean beyond belief, but 
containing sufficient furniture for common use. 

The place seemed to have been built out of uneven 
lengths of timber, crosswise, any-wise, so that the 
existence of a secret door in the sitting-room wall would 
never have been discovered by any stranger save 
by accident. When my new landlord touched a spring, 
and shewed a small shed or lean-to, containing a 
second door, and a grating about the height of my head, 
I was astonished, but easily understood that it had 
been devised as a means of escape for the smugglers 
when surprised by the excise officers. 

Then he lifted the trap-door, and, striking a match, 
we both peered down as if half expecting to see Seth 


54 


HEDRI. 


Treloar staring up at us, and gave it as his opinion 
that, but for this one little mistake of Judith’s, she 
would have been an-out-and-out good woman. I got 
but little comfort from him, and yet my spirits rose 
as I turned my back to the hovel, and standing on 
the towering cliff, along the precipitous edge of which 
a narrow path wound sinuously to the little cove 
below, gazed out at sea to where the orange line of 
sky just touched it, while betwixt them shone a single 
silvery sail. 

From that wonderful orange the sky melted by 
imperceptible tints to the translucent green that is 
never matched by any earthly tint of grass or flower,^ 
and the quick dancing lights and shadows on the 
waters seemed to laugh in the sunshine, and to touch 
here and there the sea-gulls resting upon the bold, 
dark headlands farther away. 

“ I will go back to the great sweet mother, 

Mother and lover of men, the sea ! ” 

I exclaimed aloud, and the loneliness and majesty 
of the scene did not appal me, or, at least, not yet. 

The landlord evidently did not share in my admi- 
ration for what was common to him as daily bread, 
and having recommended Jake as a general factotum, 
who would bring me supplies from the village, and 
volunteered to send him over to the hotel, half a 
dozen miles away, for my belongings, he, with the usual 


HEDRI. 


55 


Cornish courtesy, took himself and his pleasant 
sing-song voice away, evidently relieved to turn his 
back on the ill-omened abode. 

Unutterably dreary in the chilliness of the spring 
evening looked the squalid room, and I shivered as I 
sate by the fireless hearth, in the chair that Seth Tre- 
loar had occupied not so very long ago. 

Involuntarily I contrasted the silence and disuse 
with the rollicking scenes that had taken place here 
when the smugglers were stronger than the excise- 
men, and the bold Cornishmen lived their lives (ay, 
and sometimes lost them too) in the fullest sense of 
the word. 

Are not all these things set forth gloriously in 
“ Adam and Eve ? ” And I could not but think of the 
book as I sate there in the cold alone. 

But as my bodily discomfort grew, my mind 
concentrated itself the more intensely on Judith’s 
story, till I seemed to see her coming and going 
about her night’s work, exactly as she had told me, 
and if she were making the one great and fatal blun- 
der of her life, methought she committed it magnifi- 
cently well. 

And yet, what could my presence here avail her, 
her whom I had caught in the toils, with no power 
to undo the thing that I had done, out of idleness, 
vanity and curiosity } 


56 


HEDRI. 


There was only one chance, one hope, that, if justi- 
fied, could furnish me with even the faintest ground 
for applying to the Home Secretary. 

I should know what that chance and hope were 
worth soon, and by a simple experiment that I meant 
to try the moment Jake appeared. Meanwhile, I lit 
my pipe, and smoked it for an hour or so, and finally 
fell asleep. 

I was awakened by a loud knocking at the door, 
and for a moment, and in the half darkness, could 
not remember where I was. 

“ Come in,” I shouted, but the door did not un- 
close, and, though I Called out again, nobody replied. 
At last I lifted the latch myself, and there stood Jake 
verily laden like any beast of burden. 

“ I have been shouting to you, to come in,” I said, 
“didn’t you hear.? 

“ Tse bin a bit hard o’ bearin’ lately, Mister,” he 
said. 

“ How long .? ” I said, sharply. 

“I doant know, it’s jest growed upo’ me, so my 
missus says.” 

“ Come out on the cliff,” I said, “ and stand just 
where you stood on the night you saw Seth Treloar 
come home.” 

He went obediently enough, wondering. It was a 
wild evening, and the magnificent Lizard coast was 


HEDRI. 


57 


fast being shrouded in the sea-mist that crept 
insidiously inward. Jake’s figure looked dim, and 
tall, and lonely outlined against the sad grey sky, 
and far below him the monotonous rushing of the sea 
was broken by the booming of the waves, as they 
rushed into the little cove with a sullen roar. 

“ Kindly stay where you are,” I said, “ for five 
minutes, until I come to you.” 

He promised, and when I returned to the cottage, 
any one who had seen my conduct there would never 
question my right to Bedlam. 

Standing by the fireplace I gave utterance to 
sharp, spasmodic cries,' gradually ascending till they 
reached the point of shrieks, into which I put my 
whole vigour, and my lungs were those of a normally 
vigorous man. 

Having pretty well exhausted myself, I went out 
to the cliff, and found Jake precisely where I had left 
him, and with all a fisherman’s contentedness at 
doing nothing. 

“Well, Jake,” I cried, “ I have been hearing some 
queer noises — what did you hear? ” 

The man looked at me with ignorant, candid eyes. 

“ Nothing, sir,” he said, “ but the water pouring 
dbwn the cliff yonder — it makes a power of noise — 
you can hear it right out at sea.” 

I gave him his reward with a heavy heart, and 


58 


HEDRI, 


when he had lit my fire, arranged my luggage, and 
taken my orders for what I required from the village, 
he retired. 

With him went Judith’s last chance, and day after 
day, night after night, I brooded in that solitary hut, 
trying to build possibilities out of impossibilities, 
theories out of nullities, until at last my brain worked 
no longer, and whether sitting by the hearth, or 
wandering about those glorious cliffs, to whose beauty 
I had become blind, I possessed less intelligence and 
reasoning power than a dog. 

Jake brought me daily the food, fuel, and drink I 
needed, but we exchanged bare syllables, and I saw 
that he feared me, believing, with the rest of the 
village, that I was mad. 

Shadows would steal about my door after dark, 
half-seen faces peered curiously in on me as the fire- 
light illumined the corners of the ill-omened room, 
but Steve was not one of those furtive visitors, he had 
not attempted to see me since I parted with him at 
the prison gates. 

I guessed that he spent every allowable moment 
with her, and at others pursued his old calling as 
fisherman, and I knew that hope must be as dead in 
his heart as it was in mine. 

And now the time that is the most ineffably 
blessed and happy in an innocent woman’s life drew 


HEDRL 


59 


nigh, and I trembled as I thought of all that thrilling 
joy in her first-born which would make Judith cling 
all the more passionately to that life from which she 
was so soon to be thrust out with ignominy and 
shame. 


HEDRU 




CHAPTER VIIL 

I have both waged life and land, 

Your love and good-will for to have.” 

I WAS sitting one evening before the fire, neither 
sleeping nor waking, a vegetable more than a think- 
ing human being, when I heard Jake’s voice without, 
and his knock at the door. 

I said “ Come in,” listlessly, without opening my 
eyes, but the tread of two men instead of one sounded 
on the threshold, and I looked up to see a man of 
great stature following Jake, clad in a •picturesque 
costume of whose nationality I was not at first sure. 

“ Awh,” said J ake, “ here be a fren’ o’ Seth T reloar’s. 
Him be corned a long journey over t’ see ’un, so I 
broffed ’un here. Him’s in his tantrums cos him can’t 
say how-dee-doo, but on’y Seth Treloar, Seth Treloar, 
loike any Jimmy-ninny.” 

My heart leaped, my pulse bounded, as I looked at 
the stranger, for here was confirmation strong that 
Judith had told me the truth about the man in Styria 
to whom Seth would have sold her, and if she had 
told the truth in this one particular, why not in all ? 


HEDRI, 


6l 


He stood looking at me in an attitude of uncon- 
cerned grace, hearing, but not understanding Jake’s 
words, and having now decided what his nationality 
was, I counted it a piece of the rarest good fortune 
that I was able to address him in his own tongue. 
I had lived a good part of my life in Vienna, and 
had almost as thorough a knowledge of Austrian as of 
English. In fact my one gift was the gift of tongues, 
and I could talk argot in half a dozen. I dismissed 
Jake and bade the new comer be seated. 

He brightened visibly as I spoke, and the smile 
brightened what was otherwise a strong if not for- 
bidding face of pronounced Austrian type ; and as he 
took the seat opposite mine, I was able easily to 
define his class as that of a rich herdsman, probably 
from Upper or Middle Styria, where the men are 
famous for their vigour and physical strength, and 
indeed his provincialisms of speech (which I do not 
find it necessary to repeat here) soon convinced me 
that I was right. 

“ You came to see Seth Treloar } ” I said, as he 
sate impassive, waiting for me to speak. 

“Yes,” he said, “I’ve waited for him four, five, 
many weeks, and still he came not — so I am here.” 

“ Seth Treloar is dead,” I said wery distinctly. 

The man’s face changed, but he did not move a 
hair’s-breadth from his attitude, and I thought I had 


62 


HEDRL 


never seen so impassible a mortal, or one less likely 
to be overthrown by fate than he. 

“ Seth Treloar is dead,” he repeated slowly, “and 
where is Seth Treloar’s sister?” 

Though he knew not a word of English save Seth 
Treloar’s name, and the name of the place he had 
come to, he asked the question calmly, as if it were a 
perfectly natural thing to journey a thousand miles 
to fetch a woman whom he had never seen. 

“ She is alive,” I said slowly. 

“ And well, and beautiful ? ” he said. 

“She is well,” I said, “and she must always be 
beautiful.” 

His face flushed, but he said calmly, “ She is at 
Trevenick ? I may see her ? ” 

“She is not here. When Seth Treloar died, I 
took his hut and am living here alone.” 

The Styrian looked round with something like dis- 
gust in his face. 

“ A poor place for her,” he muttered, then aloud 
he said, “ how did he die ? ” He was in splendid 
health when he left me to fetch his sister. Not 
one beast of all my herd was smoother or sleeker 
than he, and he hated the life here in this little Cor- 
nish hole, and he knew he would go back to pros- 
perity, ay, and become rich if he brought me ” — 
his voice died in a low mutter, he gazed down at 


HEDRI, 63 

the ground frowning, but more with vexation, I 
thought, than regret. 

“ Where is she } ” he said, looking me full in the 
face. 

“ How can I tell } ” I answered haughtily, for the 
coolness of this rich peasant angered me, “ 1 never 
spoke to Seth Treloar in my life.” 

“ Yet you have seen her I' he said, with a piercing 
look, “ and I too will see her before another sun has 
risen.” 

“ Perhaps you cannot,” I said laconically, “ did she 
know that you were coming ? ” 

“ I sent her word by her brother,” said the Styrian 
with an unconscious loftiness that well became his 
grand stature and characteristic face. 

“ How came he to your country > ” I asked 
curiously. 

“ He was wrecked with some others on our shore,” 
said the Styrian, “ starving and in rags, and I took 
pity on him and employed him as a shepherd. He 
was quick at picking up our tongue, the life suited 
him, he became industrious and avaricious and one 
day I saw by accident in his hut a picture of a woman 
so beautiful that it set my heart on fire, and he told 
me that she was his sister, and as good as she was 
beautiful.” 

He drew from his breast a silver locket and shewed 


64 HEDRI. 

me the face within. It had been taken at Plymouth 
and was very beautiful. 

• I struggled and fought against such folly, but my 
peace was gone, and I took no pleasure in my flocks 
and herds, and at last I said to him, ‘ Go home to 
your sister, tell her that if she will be my wife, I will 
make her a good husband, and to you — to you I will 
give the post of chief shepherd.’ ” 

“You took her consent for granted,” I said, “but 
a woman usually has some voice in the matter.” 

“ Seth said she would be quite willing,” said the 
Styrian calmly, “and I sent her a noble marriage 
gift by him of a hundred golden pieces ; he said that, 
like all women, she loved money, and even if she 
had another lover that would decide her.” 

So here was the secret of the money found on 
Seth’s belt, truly the rascal had been clever, for, fail- 
ing Judith’s highly improbable return with him to 
Styria, he possessed the means of keeping himself in 
comfort for years. 

“Where is that money now.?” said the Styrian 
sharply. 

I shook my head. 

“ I don’t know,” I said. 

The Styrian looked at me searchingly as if to read 
my very thoughts, and I gave him back gaze for 
gaze. 


HEDRI. 65 

You are not deceiving me ? ” he said ; ‘‘she is not 
married? ” 

“No,” I said truly enpugh, “she is not married.” 
For her prayer and Seth’s, that they might be mar- 
ried before her child was born, had been refused on 
the ground that the • church could .not sanctify a 
union that she had committed a crime to bring about. 

A look of intense relief, exultation even, crossed 
his features. 

“ I was beginning to fear,” he said, “ that the man 
had fooled me, — but he is dead and I have wronged 
him. And when shall I see her ? ” 

“You shall see her,” I said, “but not yet. She is 
away at a considerable distance from thi^ place, and 
she must be prepared for your visit.” 

The Styrian chafed visibly, but soon displayed the 
self-control upon which I could see he prided himself. 

“Meanwhile,” I said, “remain here as my guest, 
the place, such as it is, and all in it is at your ser- 
vice.”, 

He thanked me civilly enough, and I then pro- 
ceeded to get out food and wine, which I set before 
him. He did not touch the latter, but asked for 
milk, and I observed that he ate much butter and 
cheese, but scarcely any meat. 

Apparently half asleep in my chair, I watched him 
closely, but found nothing to gratify my curiosity. 


5 


66 


HEDRI. 


until the meal was done, when he drew from his 
pocket a small horn box, shook some of its contents 
(which I could not see) into^ the palm of his hand and 
rapidly swallowed it. 

Whatever it may have been, it brought to his face 
much the same satisfied expression as that worn by 
the dram-drinker whose craving is for the moment 
appeased, and when he sate down opposite me, I felt 
half inclined to ask him what his secret refresher was. 

But as self-constituted host I had some duties to 
perform, and when I had improvised a rude bed for 
him, and had removed the plates and dishes, I found 
the Styrian, accustomed to his early hours and, early 
rising, half asleep by the fire, and considerably to my 
disappointment, he shortly after disrobed and turned 
in. 

Sitting over my solitary pipe and the coffee I pre- 
sently prepared, I had ample leisure to consider the 
strangeness of this man's unexpected arrival, but in 
no way could I perceive that he would influence 
Judith’s fate one jot. 

Why, then, had I pressed hospitality upon him, and, 
after committing myself to a lie that he would in all 
probability speedily discover, saddled myself day and 
night with a man who could at best be but an irksome 
companion to me } 

I cannot tell, save that I clung to straws and if 


HEDRl, 67 

Judith’s wild assertion, that Seth Treloar killed him- 
self, were true, then this man, who had lived in his 
company for years, and must intimately know his 
habits, might be able to throw some light upon what 
seemed a wholly incredible thing. “ This Styrian,” 
thought I, “ must be a man of no common tenacity 
and strength of will, to start off, knowing no word of 
English except Seth Treloar, Trevenick, Cornwall, 
England, in search of a woman whom he has never 
seen, and I see well enough that he is not a man to 
be trifled with, now he is here. I may keep him 
quiet for a day or two, no longer ; but during that 
time he can learn nothing from the villagers as they 
cannot speak his tongue, and he cannot speak theirs, 
meanwhile I shall have leisure to study him, and 
extract from him all that he knows about Seth Tre- 
loar. 

After — but the morrow should take care of itself. 

It was with a distinct feeling of happiness and 
almost of hope that at last I knocked the ashes out 
of my pipe, paused awhile to look down on the calm, 
healthy face of the Styrian, strong even in the aban- 
donment of sleep, and mounted the narrow stairs 
that led to the only chamber the hut afforded. 


68 


HEDRI. 


CHAPTER IX. 

** As on the driving cloud the shining bow 

That gracious thing made up of tears and light, 

’Mid the wild rack and rain that stands below. 

Stands smiling forth, unmoved and freshly bright.” 

The room was empty when I descended early next 
morning, and the house door stood open shewing the 
moving sparkle of the sea, fretting itself against the 
translucent green and yellow of the sky. 

Early as it was, Jake had already been here, for a 
pitcher of milk (only partly full, as if some one had 
drunk from it), some bread, and other articles of food 
were placed, as usual, outside the door, and when I 
had taken these in, I proceeded to make my prepa- 
rations for breakfast, and then strolled out in search 
of my visitor. 

I knew pretty well who would be his companion, 
for Jake was as inquisitive as a squirrel or a monkey, 
and as they had but one word upon which to ring the 
changes of conversation, instinct guided me to the 
churchyard, where, sure enough, I found both men 
standing before a plain tombstone, upon which was 
inscribed, 

SETH TRELOAR. 

Died April, 188-, 


HEDRL 


69 


I approached them unobserved, and saw that the 
Styrian eagerly desired to ask some question of Jake, 
and that his powerlessness to do so moved him to a 
deep inward rage. 

He clenched his sinewy hand with a gesture that 
spoke volumes, and turned a look upon Jake before 
which the man drew back, but the Styrian’s passion 
was quickly controlled, and he moved slowly away in 
the direction of the hut. 

He gave no heed to the beauty of the surroundings 
through which he passed, he never once lifted his head 
to draw in a breath of the pure, sweet air, nor cliff, 
nor sky, nor sea had power to win a glance from him, 
as he moved forward sunk in profound thought, his 
uncommon dress marking him out as a beacon upon 
which all the villagers crowded to their doors to 
gaze. 

Jake, unconscious of being himself followed, kept a 
few paces behind the Styrian, and when the latter 
entered the hut, hovered about outside, desirous to 
enter, but fearful of being caught by me on my return. 
The preparations for breakfast shewed him that I was 
abroad, and presently he too stepped over the 
threshold, and disappeared. 

Now I am not usually either a spy or an eaves- 
dropper, but on this occasion I decided to be both, 
and, turning in my tracks, I made a circuit, and so got 


70 


HEDRI. 


to the back of the hut, and quietly into the small 
place dignified by the name of the secret room, where 
was the small grating that gave directly on the 
kitchen. I looked in. Jake was in the act of lifting 
the iron ring of the trap-door, and the Styrian, with 
indifference in his expression, was looking on. 

My first impulse was to smile, for Jake had literally 
one eye on the door, fearing my return, and the other 
on his companion, who only frowned and looked 
puzzled *as Jake pointed to the black void below, 
repeating, “ Beth Treloar, Seth TreloaVy' over and over 
again. 

Then ensued a display of histrionic power, for 
which I was not in the least prepared, for snatching 
up a piece of cord lying near, he rapidly wound it 
round his arms, simulating a man who is securely 
bound, then threw himself on the ground, stretched 
himself stiffly out, and simulated death. 

The Styrian watched him closely, but without 
visible comprehension, till Jake by a series of jerks 
that shewed considerable muscular energy, but still 
preserving in his features a corpse-like rigidity, 
brought himself to the open mouth of the cellar and 
made a feint of going through it head foremost. 

This, I need scarcely say, he was most careful not 
to do, and having opened his eyes and sat^ up, he 
pointed downwards with much vigour, repeating 


HEDRI, 


71 

“Seth Treloar down there ! ” till the sudden flash of 
comprehension on the Styrian’s face convinced him 
that he was understood. 

Then he replaced the trap-door, tossed the cord 
back to where he found it, brushed some of the dust 
from his jersey, and with a confirmatory nod meant 
to convey, “ it’s all true,” made tracks for the door. 

But the Styrian’s strong hand caught him back. 

“ Murdered ? ” burst from his lips in Austrian, and 
in defiance of common sense, but strange to say, 
whether it be that the thought of murder, or rather its 
image, is able to convey itself in one flash from eye to 
eye, being by its human horror as well understood of 
the deaf as the dumb, Jake distinctly understood the 
Styrian’s question and nodded vehemently. For a 
few moments the stranger stood motionless, all his 
energies concentrated in thought, then he made a 
gesture of enquiry, that said as plain as possible, 

“ How ” 

Jake was equal to the occasion, and performed his 
part so well that I was not surprised to hear later 
that he had often rehearsed the whole drama in the 
tap-room of the “ Chough and Crow.” 

He crossed the room, threw himself into a chair, 
the chair in which Seth Treloar had sate on the 
night of his return. In this he leaned back, affecting 
to sit up shortly, and look smilingly at some one who 


72 


HEDRI. 


approached him. He then pretended to take some 
vessel from the invisible person, to swallow its con- 
tents, to be seized at once with violent pain and sick- 
ness (it was droll to see him, in the paroxysms of 
agony, still keeping a weather eye on the door, in 
case of my return), to roll on the ground in convul- 
sions, biting and kicking like a rabid dog, and finally 
to stretch himself out stiff and stark, as if the last 
office he required would be at the hands of the 
undertaker. 

The Styrian had watched with bent brows the 
first part of the pantomime, fully perceiving its signi- 
ficance, however grotesquely expressed, yet I saw in 
a moment that it neither surprised nor convinced 
him, and I said to myself, “ This man listens to a 
circumstantial tale that is entirely vitiated by some 
secret knowledge that he possesses.” 

Jake, out of breath, and disappointed with the 
effect of his simulated death, came nearer the impas- 
sive man, who looked up suddenly, and began a 
pantomime of his own. 

I caught his meaning before Jake did. “Did Seth 
Treloar die of poison before he was pushed into the 
cellar, or after } ” 

But when Jake had made him understand, an ex- 
pression of incredulity, quickly followed by astonish- 
ment, crossed his face, he turned aside, threw out his 


HEDRL 


73 


hands vehemently, and his thundered out Austrian, 
** No ! No ! Impossible / reached me clearly where I 
stood . 

Jake shrugged his shoulders and slipped away, he 
knew he had stayed too long already. 

For some moments after he had gone the Styrian 
stood motionless, revolving many things clearly not 
pleasant in his mind. Then he smiled evilly, and 
half drew from a fold in his sash a pistol of curious 
workmanship, and it needed not his significant look 
at the staircase leading to my sleeping quarters to 
convince me that here was a man only to be fooled 
at serious personal risk to the fooler. 

He put back the pistol, produced the little horn 
box, shook out some of its contents into the palm of 
his hand, and swallowed it. 

I saw the color distinctly — white. Involuntarily I 
thought of another man whom I had seen taking a 
pinch of white powder out of a box, but with very 
different results. 

Over the Styrian’s face stole the same. expression 
of voluptuous satisfaction that I had noticed on the 
previous night, then he turned to the table as though 
his appetite were freshly whetted, and, without wait- 
ing for me, sate down and fell to. 

The act convinced me of his utter contempt and 
indifference to me. I counted for nothing ; he had 


74 


HEDRI, 


come to fulfil a purpose, and meant to do it; my 
presence here could neither hinder nor advance him 
one jot. So he thought — but through my brain had 
just darted an idea so wild, so inspired, that I felt 
absolutely giddy as I left my loop-hole and regained 
the fresh morning air. 


HEDRI, 


75 


CHAPTER X. 

What have I done but that which nature destined, 

Or the blind elements stirred up within me ? 

If good were meant, why were we made these beings ? ” 

The Styrian had the grace to rise as I entered the 
room, but in the very tone of his greeting I observed 
a change, and knew that he already distrusted me. 

His appetite, however, was in no way affected, for 
he put away vast quantities of butter, cheese and 
milk, looking at me with a kind of pity as I made 
my moderate meal of coffee and bread. When he 
had finished, he leaned across the table and looked 
me full in the face, a tough, resolute-eyed fellow, who 
might have passed for a brigand whose only law was 
his own will. 

“Seth Treloar was murdered,’' he said. “Who 
murdered him ? ” 

I neither turned my eyes away from him, nor 
answered save by shrugging my shoulders, and 
shaking my head. 

“ He was killed first, then thrown down that trap- 
door,” (he pointed to it). “ Why was he killed ? I 
repeat, who killed him ? ” 


76 


HEDRL 


“That is what I am trying to find out,” I said. 

The Styrian looked at me with eyes that searched 
my very soul. 

“You do not know ? ” he said. 

“ I do not know.” 

“ Does any one know .•* ” said the Styrian. 

“ Seth Treloar.” 

The Styrian laughed harshly, “Of course, — but 
the man who killed Seth Treloar.?” 

“ I believe Seth Treloar killed himself.” 

“And who threw him down the trap-door .? ” 

“ Another person — for reasons wholly unconnected 
with his death.” 

The Styrian sate rigid, and concentrated in thought. 

“ It is a strange story,” he said. “ A man dies, is 
thrust into a cellar. If he had died by his own hand, 
why not bury him .? To whose advantage was it to 
hide him .? Whoever did so must surely have come 
under suspicion .?” 

I said nothing, the filling of my pipe occupied me. 

“You are playing the fool with me,” said the 
Styrian in a hoarse guttural voice, “ but the truth I 
will have, even if it cost your life.” 

I laughed contemptuously at his melodramatic 
tone. 

“ It is not my life that is in question,” I said, *■ ‘but 
that of, as I believe, an entirely innocent person. 


HRDRL 


77 

The manner of Seth Treloar’s death did arouse sus- 
picion, and the person accused is now in prison.” I 
paused. 

“ Found guilty ? ” said the Styrian. 

“Under sentence of death,” I continued, “but that 
person no more murdered him than you or I did.” 

“ Who was the person ” said the Styrian. 

“ The woman,” I said, “ with whose portrait you 
fell in love, and whom you have come all the way to 
seek ; the woman,” I added slowly, “ who was his 
wife.” 

The Styrian thrust back his chair, leaped to his 
feet, and turned on me with the ferocity of a mad 
bull. 

“His wife — his wife ! You are mad, and a liar! 
She was his sister, he would not have dated to fool 
me so ! ” 

He literally towered over me, his great stature 
seeming to rise higher with the wrath and fury that 
swelled him ; his clenched fist involuntarily moved to 
fall with crushing force on my head, but I did not stir, 
and with an oath he dropped it by his side, though 
his features remained dark and convulsed with pas- 
sion. 

“He lied to you,” I said quietly ; “he was always a 
liar and a rogue. And he wanted to make her some- 
thing worse than himself. So far he meant honestly 


78 


HEDRL 


by you, that he would have taken her to you, and 
sold her as his sister — if she would have let him.” 

“And she killed him when he told her of his 
intention,” said the Styrian more calmly, “ and hid him 
yonder ? She must be a strong woman, and her will 
must be as strong as her heart.” He snatched at a 
slender gold chain hanging round his throat, and 
drew out a locket, which he opened, and looked at 
with a frown that gradually softened into extraordi- 
nary tenderness and love. 

“ She did right,” he said suddenly and passion- 
ately. “The man was a hound and liar, it was not 
her fault that he deceived me, and he deserved all he 
got ; she must have been a good woman to be so 
angry ; and Ae is dead, she is free now — free — ” 
He stopped suddenly as one palsied by a sudden 
thought ; for some moments he did not speak, then 
striding over to me he seized my arm and, shaking 
me violently, said, 

“Where is she? Speak! 01 God I She is in 
prison. She is to die — to die for killing that scoun- 
drel.?” 

“ She did not kill him,” I said. “ I told you that 
before. But she will be hanged all the same.” 

As I spoke I released myself with a sudden exer- 
cise of strength that sent him reeling backwards, and 
seemed to astonish him. 


HEDRI, 


79 


“Tell me the truth,” he said, with more respect in 
his tone than he had hitherto shown me. “ You do 
not believe her guilty, and I forgive her if she is.” 

I could have smiled at his sultan-like assumption 
that Judith was absolutely at his disposal, but the 
grandeur of his simplicity impressed me, and I began 
my story without loss of time. 

He heard the account of Treloar’s married life 
without much emotion, though he occasionally gave 
vent to an expression of disgust ; but when I brought 
Stephen upon the scene, he became transformed into 
an enraged man who. sees snatched from his starving 
lips the morsel he hungrily covets. 

“ And she loves him, she adores him, this miser- 
able fisherman } ” he cried. 

I shrugged my shoulders. 

“Who can answer for a woman ” I said. “All 
women love comfort, and, as you say, he is poor. 
And she is not his wife,” I added, narrowly watching 
his working face ; “ if by any miracle you could save 

her, who knows but that ” I did not complete the 

sentence, but I saw he understood me. 

“ Wife to one man, mistress to another,” he said, the 
words dropping harshly and slowly from his lips, “ so 
is the woman I’ve come all this way to find — 
but go on with the story, there will be more surprise 
yet.” 


8o 


HEDRI, 


I described Seth Treloar’s return to Smuggler’s 
Hole, his disappearance, the departure of Stephen 
and Judith next morning, her return to the hut for a 
few moments, and her strange conduct in the train, 
where I was eye-witness to the incident of the box of 
arsenic and the effect produced on Stephen when he 
tasted it. 

(At this point the Styrian laughed contemptuously, 
as a fire-eater might at one who dreaded fire.) I 
went on to relate how I recovered the box that 
Judith had thrown out of the window, how I traced 
her as the woman who had left a man hidden away 
at Smuggler’s Hole, how I had caused her to be 
brought back to England and put on her trial, how 
she had been condemned, on circumstantial evidence, 
to death, and how only a short time now would 
elapse before the carrying out of the sentence. I 
then gave him a succinct account of the events of 
that night, as related by Judith herself. 

The Styrian had not asked a single question during 
the recital, but I had read .first scorn and then flat 
denial in his face when I described the dose of 
arsenic found in the dead man’s stomach; he even 
waved his hand impatiently as if to motion away an 
absurdity, but when I had ceased to speak, he began 
a very vivid cross-examination of me. 

“You are sure that the potion she gave him was 


HEDRL 


8l 


harmless, beyond keeping him asleep for twenty- 
four hours ? ’’ 

“ Quite sure.’’ 

“ There was no trace of poison found in the stomach 
besides arsenic ^ ” 

“ None.” 

“ She did not bruise or injure him when she hid 
him in the cellar ? ” 

“ There was not a mark or bruise of any kind on 
him.” 

“ It would be dark when he came to his senses, 
there would be no light by which he could see the 
trap-door above, and his arms were bound ; did the 
rope hang in such a manner that in the dark he 
would strike against it or touch it ? ” 

“ No. By lifting his hands he could touch it — not 
unless^” 

“ How could a bound man do that ? ” 

“ He could have shifted the cord easily — as any 
other man of half his muscular strength could have 
done.” 

“Always supposing that he had not swallowed 
enough arsenic to kill a dozen men,” said the Styrian, 
whose excitement increased each moment, though he 
made visible efforts to subdue it. 

“ Arsenic that was never administered by his wife,” 
I said boldly, “but by — himself. God knows by 


6 


82 


HEDRL 


what devilish agency a man is able to take a life- 
destroying drug and thrive on it, but you at least 
should know, since you carry a box with similar 
contents to the one he carried, and without which, 
and possibly for lack of it, he died.” 

I was not prepared for the effect of my wild shot, 
which had yet hit truth in the bull’s-eye, or the 
Styrian’s face belied him. His eyes quailed before 
mine as I pushed my advantage remorselessly. 

“You can see her,” I said, “and you will. You 
know that he died of either too much or too little of 
a powder both you and he seem to be able to take 
with impunity, and you will go with me at once 
before a magistrate and swear the evidence which 
will clear her.” 

“You talk like one mad,” said the Styrian sullenly. 
“ In one breath you say men thrive on a poison, in 
the next you confess that Seth Treloar died of it. 
How do you reconcile the two statements ? ” 

“ I hope to do so before I am much older,” I said 
coolly, for by now I saw what his line would be, and 
decided on my own. 

For a moment he looked disconcerted, then rose 
and went to the window, where he stood gazing out 
and thinking deeply. 

“ I must see her,” he said at last ; “ take me to her.” 

I shook my head, and went on smoking. 


HEDRI. 83 

But I say you shall,” he said, striding close up to 
me and with a look of absolute murder in his face. 

“Not I; unless you are going to give evidence 
that will clear her.” 

“ How can I do that?” he cried angrily. 

“You can do it,” I said, “and you will. What! 
You will stand by and see a woman hanged for a 
murder that you htow she did not commit, for want 
of a few words that cannot possibly hurt you ? 
Shame on you! And who knows but that in her 
gratitude to you ” 

“You said she was fond of the other fellow,” said 
the Styrian sullenly. 

“ Was^ man, was — but who will answer for what a 
beautiful woman is ? ” 

“I will see her,” said the Styrian with stubborn 
lips, “ and then I will tell you. She cannot be far 
away, and if you refuse to take me, that fool who 
brings you food will guide me to her.” 

“ Find him,” I said curtly, “ and go.” 

But the Styrian lingered. 

“Will they admit me ?” he said. 

“ Not without me,” I said indifferently. 

“Then you will come too,” he said. “See here,^I 
am rich, I am not ill-looking, I love her, I would take 
her away from a shameful death to give her such a 
home as she never dreamt of. Is it likely that she 
will refuse ? ” 


84 


HEDRI. 


I looked at the man, then thought of Stephen. 
Many a woman not cast in Judith’s mould would not 
have hesitated between the rich man of many flocks 
and herds and the poor fisherman whose daily bread 
and life were at the mercy of the waves. 

* I will take you to her,” I said. “ And supposing 
that she should refuse ? ” * 

“ Come,” he said, and that was all the answer I got 
as he stalked along the cliff before me. 


HEDRI, 


85 


CHAPTER XL 

“ The new-fa’en snow to be your smock. 

It becomes your body best ; 

Your head all wrapt wi’ the eastern wind, 

And the cauld rain on your breast. 

Arrived at the gaol, I left the angry, impatient man 
without, while I sought the governor to explain to 
him the state of affairs. I also begged that a mes- 
senger might be sent for Stephen, though I could 
hardly have explained why I wished him to be 
present at the Styrian’s interview with Judith. 

The governor, who had hitherto held the worst 
possible opinion of the woman, was inclined to admit 
that the Styrian’s appearance corroborated her story, 
though he did not for a moment believe that his 
coming could in any way influence her fate. 

But I thought differently, and my heart beat high 
with hope as I left him. 

Judith, whose figure was almost entirely concealed 
by a long cloak, rose as we entered the cell, but kept 
her foot on the fishing-net that she was making, look- 
ing past me with eyes of grave wonder at the man 
following behind me. 


86 


HEDRI. 


He on his part stood abashed and confused 
before the glorious woman who so far outstripped 
his expectations, and so for awhile the two stood 
looking on one another, then the colour suddenly 
flashed into her face and she sate down and resumed 
her work. 

Judith,” I said, “ I have brought to you a man who 
knew your husband in Styria, and who arrived last 
night in Trevenick in search of him.” 

Judith looked up, in a moment she knew that this 
was the man to whom Seth Treloar had promised her 
as a wife, and there was no anger, only pity in her 
voice, as she said, 

“ Seth Treloar desaved ’ee, an* made a fule o’ ’ee, 
but he be dead naw.” 

“ He does not understand English,” I said ; then 
I repeated to him what she said. 

The Styrian answered nothing, his burning eyes 
were rooted to the woman whose fairness was to her 
picture as the full flood of sunlight is to the pale 
glimmer of the moon. 

“ Judith,” I went on, “this man can save you if he 
will. He knows that Seth Treloar died of arsenic 
administered by himself, but under what conditions 
I know not, nor can I persuade him to tell me. If 
you can so work upon his pity that he will speak, 
then you will untie the knot from about your neck, 


HEDRI, 87 

but he will be hard to deal with, for he has come 
over here to fetch you for his wife.” 

Judith turned and looked at him. 

Some things aie learned in a second of time from a 
woman’s eyes that a whole volume of written words 
might fail to teach, and I knew that he perfectly 
understood all the dumb entreaty, the deep beseech- 
ing of that prayer put forth from her helplessness to 
his strength, that might surely have kindled chivalry 
even in the breast of a boor. 

“ Put by your desire, and save a human soul 
alive,” said her eyes, but her very loveliness undid 
her petition, and if her mere picture had held such 
power over him, where should he find strength to 
thrust from him the breathing woman whose looks 
and voice were sweet as love ? 

“ Tell her,” he said to me, “ that I will save her on 
one condition only, that she becomes my wife.” 

I repeated his words, and Judith stepped back, 
throwing out her hands with a grand gesture that 
expressed repudiation, disappointment and scorn 
more eloquently than any words. 

“ Th’ coward ! ” she said, between her teeth ; “ him’s 
worse than a brute beast, an’ me belongin’ to Steve, 
an’ th’ little ’un an’ a’. Tell ’un,” she added proudly, 
“as I’d rather die Steve’s light-o’-love than be wife to 
he or any ither man, an’ what him knaws, that ’un 


88 


HEDRI. 


can keep, us did wi’oiit ’un afore, an’ us can do wi’out 
'un agen ! ” 

She resumed her seat, and went calmly on with her 
netting, then suddenly the fire in her eyes flamed out, 
and she bowed her head upon her arms. 

“ Steve ! Steve ! ” she said. 

It was like a mother’s cry of love and yearning 
forced from a soul that had schooled itself to look 
calmly upon death, but to whom a momentary pros- 
pect of life had renewed all the bitterness of an 
undeserved doom, but it woke no echo of pity in the 
Styrian’s breast, for well enough he knew that it was 
not for him, and his face hardened as he looked 
down upon her. 

If she would not live to please him, then she should 
not live to please another man, so much I read in his 
eyes and the cruel curl of his lips, and from this 
determination I afterwards knew he never wavered. 

“ Let her be,” he said to me calmly, ‘‘ she will 
come to her senses in time. Where is this Steve on 
whom' she calls like a bird for her mate ? Bah ! she 
will forget him and call on me just as lovingly before 
she is many months older. She was born to wear 
rich clothes — not such woollen as now disfigures her. 
Tell her that I will enrich him also if she will leave 
him, and they will both live to bless me, for there is 
no such thing as love when the body starves.” 


HEDRI, 


89 


I gave no heed to him, but turned to Judith. 

• “ Do not send this man away in anger,” I said ; 
“the key to the mystery of Seth Treloar’s death is 
locked in his breast, and the only fingers that can 
steal or wile it away from him are yours.” 

Judith thrust back the loosened masses of bronze 
hair from her face, and looked up. 

“ What ’ud ’eehave me do } ” she said. “ I’m jest 
mazed, an’ how do ’ee knaw but he be a hard } Him 
warnt here when Seth Treloar died, an’ how can ’un 
knaw aught about it ^ ” she added, exercising the 
common sense that excitement had for a time driven 
from its stronghold. 

“That I cannot tell you,” I said, “though can. 
You ask me what you are to do — something harder, 
probably, than you have either skill or strength for.” 

“What be it,” asked Judith, looking at me with 
sombre, distrustful eyes. 

“ Fool him,” I said with energy. “ Does a captive 
thrust from him the hand that contains his ransom ? 
Hide your detestation of his offer, let me tell him 
that you must have time to think over his proposals, 
and meanwhile I will watch him, and try to surprise 
his secret.” 

“ I canna do ’t,” cried Judith with heaving breast, 
and as I looked at her, I realised that she was mo- 
rally and physically incapable of acting a part that 


90 


HEDRI, 


the majority of women would have filled with con- 
summate, ease. 

“ How could I sarve ^un so ? ” said Judith reproach- 
fully, “ an’ after Seth Treloar hev chated ’un ivery way, 
an’ broffed ’un here on a fule’s errand ? M’appen, too, 
’twar this man’s gold as war found i’ th’ belt.” 

“Yes,” I said, “he sent it as a marriage gift to you, 
but Seth never meant it to reach your hand.” 

“ Awh ! ” said Judith, “ ’tissafe eno’, an’ ’ee ’ll see it 
be paid back to ’un, wont ’ee ? Poor sawl,” she added 
with all a Cornishwoman’s sense of justice, “ him ha’ 
got summat t’ complain o’ anyways.” 

She looked at the Styrian not unkindly as she 
spoke, and his face softened so instantly that I saw 
how he would be as wax in her hands, had she but 
the skill and the courage to handle him. 

At that moment the door opened and Stephen 
Croft came in. 

Pale, haggard, the ghost of his former self, he yet 
looked beautiful as a god compared with the repellant 
but picturesque figure of the Styrian, at the sight of 
whom he stood still, arrested by surprise, while Judith 
with a cry of joy ran forward and, 

“ Like a loose blossom on a gusty night,” 

fell into the arms that involuntarily closed around 
her. 


HEDRI. 


91 


The church had banned and the law had cursed 
the pair, yet methought I never saw more purely 
loving man and wife than these twain, upon whom 
the Styrian gazed with sullen eyes, and face disfigured 
with passion and jealous rage. 

“This man,” I said, in answer to Steve’s enquiring 
glance, “ is the Styrian of whom Seth Treloar told 
Judith. When Seth did not return he came over 
here in search of him, and also on another and more 
mysterious errand.” 

“ An’ what may that be ? ” said Stephen, his face 
suddenly growing stern and an angry light coming 
into his blue eyes, while Judith pressed closely to him, 
closely as a loving woman might cling, 

“ He came to fetch Judith,” I said, “Judith whom 
he believed to be Seth’s sister, and who had been 
promised to him as his wife.” 

“ Awh ! ” said Steve with a fierce laugh, “ ’ee can tell 
’un t’ get along home to wance, him have corned a bit 
late i’ th^day, for more reasons nor one.” 

Fondly he smoothed Judith’s hair as he spoke, and 
over her head the two men exchanged looks of hatred 
and defiance, that in Stephen were strongly mingled 
with triumph. 

“ He is not to be despised,” I said ; “this man knows 
the true secret of Seth Treloar’s death, and a word 
from him would open those prison gates and make 
Judith a free woman.” 


92 


HEDRI. 


Stephen’s arms slipped from Judith, and he stood 
looking at me with dazed eyes, too deeply stunned 
for joy or more than partial comprehension. 

“ Be ’ee try in’ t’ make a fule o’ me ? ” he said at last ; 
“’ee had always a bee i’ yer bonnet, an’ how can him 
knaw aught o’ what ’un warnt here t’ see ? ” 

“ Awh ! ” said J udith taking his hand, “ true enuff is’t. 
I alius sed they was up t’ tricks wi’ th’ pison, an’ 
furrin’ folks has queer ways, but whativer him knaws, 
my dear, us wont hear a word on’t.” 

“ Eh !” said Stephen, “ him can spake for ’ee an’ wun- 
not ? But I’ll jest make ’un ! ” 

“ Naw,” said Judith, pulling him back, ‘^he sets too 
big a price ’pon it for we. What do ’ee think it 
be ? ” 

Stephen’s breast heaved as Judith’s face of mingled 
love and scorn told him the truth, and the hot blood 
rushed into his own. 

“ How dare ’un,” he cried, “ t’ make bargains wi’ a 
poor sawl, an’ play pitch an’ toss with her life, \ll for his 
own bit o’ pleasure,” and with clenched fist and fury 
in his eyes he advanced on the Styrian. 

“ Peace,” I cried, arresting his arm while the two 
men, of about equal stature but utterly dissimilar 
looks, glared at each other like wild beasts about to 
spring, when he came to the hut he did not even 
know of your existence. Blame Seth Treloar, not 
him.” 


HEDRI. 


93 


Stephen’s arm fell to his side, but his eyes still 
shone hatred. As to Judith, I caught a look on her 
face then that at the moment shocked me in so good 
a woman, for so might look a lioness who saw her 
mate punish a bold usurper of his rights. 

With difficulty I drew Stephen aside, where his 
angry eyes could not rest on his rival, and Judith 
followed us and stood beside him. 

“You are both acting like fools,” I said impa- 
tiently ; “ instead of conciliating this man, you are 
defying him to do his worst. If he goes away in his 
present mood, Judith’s last hope of being saved goes 
with him.” 

“ Has ’ee a mind t’ wheedle ’un } ” said Stephen, 
instinctively drawing Judith closer, and with all his 
jealous heart in his eyes. 

She only laughed for answer, and out of pure 
devilry, as I suppose, clasped both her arms round 
Stephen’s neck and kissed him. 

It was the last straw. With a furious oath the 
Styrian stamped his foot and battered with his 
clenched fists on the door till a gaoler came. 

Cursing, he strode over the threshold, and groping 
his way as one blind got free out of the gaol, but 
quickly as I followed, I could not come up with him, 
nor did I see him again that day. 


94 


HEDRI. 


CHAPTER XII. 

And you killed her ? 

May eternal wrath flame round you ! ” 

Wandering from cliff to cliff aimlessly as my 
thoughts went beating hither and thither, my most 
abiding sensation was one of anger against Judith for 
her impolitic conduct. She might surely have tem- 
porized with the Styrian, have led him on, at no 
hurt to herself, till she had willed from him some 
hint or clue to his secret, but instead of this she had 
deliberately maddened him by her passionately dis- 
played love for Stephen, and so flung away her last 
chance. 

And yet, when at nightfall I returned to find the 
hut still empty, I decided that he had gone back to 
his own country as suddenly as he had left it, and 
bitterly out of heart I sate down by the cold hearth, 
thinking of the hopes that had sprung in me so 
lately as that morning. 

Something, too, of Judith’s doubts in this man’s 
power to save her assailed me now; after all, might 
he not have been affecting a knowledge that he had 


HEDRI, • 


95 


not, solely to obtain a sight of the woman he so 
passionately coveted ? 

He might have been, but I felt convinced that he 
was not. And a sense of baffled fury filled me at 
the thought of him, on his way back to Styria, 
carrying the undivulged secret that would have made 
the two most miserable people alive the happiest, 
while from me would have been lifted an intolerable 
burden that would haunt me to my life’s end. 

Judge, then, of my joy when at dusk I heard the 
latch lifted, and saw standing in the aperture of the 
door a tall shape, whose dishevelled hair and muddy 
clothes bore witness to the violence of the physical 
and mental exercise that had racked it, and when 
the haggard wretch sank into the corner before me, 
I could almost (in- the sudden relief his return 
afforded me) have found it iii my heart to pity him. 

But I gave no sign of such weakness, and went on 
smoking my pipe as though he were not present, and, 
while I did so, resolved upon my plan of action. 

His sullen looks were bent downwards, but ex- 
pressed no shame, only the silent rage of a man 
unaccustomed to be beaten, and loathing the pain 
that his baulked desire inflicted upon him. 

Presently I rose, knocked the ashes out of my pipe, 
and going upstairs collected a few necessaries I had 
there, put them in a portmanteau, and bringing it 


96 


HEDRL 


down proceeded to add certain other trifles that were 
lying about, then fastened it, and placed it ready by 
the door with my overcoat and rug, then resumed my 
seat opposite the Styrian and spoke. 

“ I am going away,” I said, “ but you are at liberty 
to use this place as long as you please. Jake will 
bring you all you require.” 

Worn out as he was, the Styrian’s eyes pierced me 
as he said. 

Why are you going ? ” 

I shrugged my shoulders. 

“ Why should I stay ? ” I said, “ I have neither the 
wish nor the heart to see a woman hanged for a 
crime that she did not commit, a woman whom a 
word too from you would save.” 

The Styrian laughed harshly,- 

“ Is your blood so cold in your country ? ” he said, 
“do you always throw the women you love into the 
arms of other men ^ Living, she would be his ; dead 
she is as much mine as his.” 

“ Not so,” I cried, “since you have possessed neither 
her heart nor her. Go home, go home to your own 
country and hold up your head there if you can with 
the memory for ever with you of the coward’s deed 
you have done over here.” 

“ It is I who have been deceived,” cried the Styrian 
with heaving breast, “ I came honourably to make her 


HEDRI. 


97 


my wife, only to find that I was be-fooled by a 
scoundrel whom I had housed and fed when he was 
destitute, whom I taught and enriched till he had 
almost forgotten his former miserable estate, and who 
rewarded me as you know.” 

“ What he did is no business of hers,” I said, looking 
him full in the face with bitter contempt, “ and all 
the sins of his mis-spent life would weigh as nothing 
in the balance of your blood-guiltiness, for if she 
dies, you are her murderer.” 

“ You are mad,” said the Styrian sullenly, “ the law 
of your country found her guilty, and your laws are 
just. I have lied to you, and I could not save her if 
I would. You think that Seth Treloar and I knew 
some secret about arsenic that enabled us to take it 
with impunity — why then did he die from an over- 
dose of it ” 

“God knows,” I said bitterly, “your confounded 
juggling with the cursed stuff is beyond me — but 
probably by some oversight he had not his antidote 
with him.” 

A flitting smile of contempt told me that I had 
missed the mark, then the Styrian said calmly, 

“ He never carried, for he never needed, an anti- 
dote.” 

I shrugged my shoulders and yawned, as one utterly 
weary of the subject. 


7 


98 


HEDRI. 


“ I give it up/' I said, indifferently, “ I have wasted 
far too much time over the matter already. May I 
expect to see you on my return ? ” 

“That depends upon when you come,” said the 
Styrian. “ Look you — she is a fool. On the one hand 
life and riches with me, on the other a horrible death 
and nothing — not even her proud fisherman for com- 
pany. All to-night she will think and think ..to- 
morrow I will go to her, and she will answer me 
differently. Eh } ” he added in a harsh note of inter- 
rogation. 

But I made him no answer, only nodding my head 
in a curt farewell to him as I went out. 

It was pitch night by now, and the breakers below 
the cliff seemed rolling to my very feet, but above 
their sound I heard the clashing of rough bolts and 
bars with which the Styrian hastened to barricade 
the hut. 

Then I saw the blind pulled down, and heard the 
shutters close, and I had a curious feeling of being 
turned out like a dog from my own hearth as I stood 
in the darkness without. But I was hungry, and had 
beside some arrangements to make, so, after concealing 
my bag and rug in a cleft of the rock hard by, I 
persued the winding path that led dowm to Trevenick, 
and was soon inside the cheerful hostel that I had 
more than once before visited. 


HEDRl. 


99 


Smiles awaited me, and a good homely dinner 
followed in due course, during which I saw many a 
shy glance stolen at me by the buxom landlady, as 
in the village I was looked upon as almost a wizard 
for the part I had played in bringing Judith to justice. 

“ So you’m got a visitor up to th’ hut, sir,” she 
said, as she set my modest dessert before me. 

“A friend of Seth Treloar’s,” I said. 

“ Awh,” she said looking grave, “ better fo’ ’un poor 
sawl if ’un had bided ’mongst them as ^vished ’un no 
harm. Who’d iver ha’ thought Judith ’ud turn out 
sich a devil } For sure but Seth war a ne’er-do-weel, 
an’ niver happy but when he was torsticated, but 
nuthin’ him iver took did ’un th’ harm’ that wan cup 
that Judith gi’ed ’un when he corned home, not 
knawin’ she war wu’ child by anither man.” 

“You have always believed her guilty,” I said. 

“ Iss, she luv’d Steve powerfu’ eno’ to do anythin’ 
so ’s them two shouldn’t be divided, but part they’ll 
have to now, befo’ long.” 

But I did not feel quite so sure of that parting as 
an hour later I climbed the steep path that led to 
Smuggler’s Hole. 


lOO 


HEDRI, 


CHAPTER XIII. 

‘‘ He turned her owre and owre again 
O’ gin her skin was white ! 

I might have spared that bonny face 
To have been some man’s delight.” 

I STOOD still to listen cutside the hut, but all was 
silent, no glimmer of light shewed through the cracks 
of the crazy old shutters. 

Evidently the Styrian had a little anticipated his 
usual time for retiring, and presently he gave an 
oral proof of it, for a distinct sound of snoring reached 
me, and I smiled at discovering the quarter whence 
it issued, being no less a place than the bed-room 
upstairs, which he evidently preferred to the shake- 
down I had made up for him below. 

No sound could have pleased me better. He slept 
with barricaded doors, secure as he supposed in a 
fortress, and with not the smallest fear of surprise 
to keep him awake. Exhausted as he was his slum- 
bers were likely to be profound, and my spirits rose 
as I went round to the back of the hut, and lit the 
lanthorn with which I had taken care to provide my- 
self at the inn. • 


HEDRI. 


loi 


The door of the small outhouse or lean-to yielded 
readily to my touch ; I closed it behind me, and 
looked through the narrow grating I have before 
mentioned, into the room beyond. The embers on 
the hearth still glowed, but the place was in total 
darkness, and at once I opened the secret door, and 
stepped in. 

Overhead came the long regular breathing of the 
Styrian, for awhile I stood listening, then I removed 
my boots, darkened the lanthorn, and with the 
utmost caution proceeded to creep up the stairs that 
ended in an open space, in one corner of which stood 
the bed upon which my unbidden guest had disposed 
himself. 

He was fully dressed, so much I saw in the narrow 
blink of the lanthorn I permitted myself to uncover, 
and bitter disappointment seized me, for I knew that 
the thing I sought was actually on his body, and that 
my chances of taking it from him were small indeed. 

He lay on his back, one arm, with the hand open 
and empty, thrown behind his head, the other hidden 
beneath the coverlid with which he had half wrapped 
himself. 

At a little distance from the bed was a chair, and 
upon this I sate down to think, but thought availed 
me little. Nothing short of overcoming him by 
sheer physical strength that out-matched his (which 


102 


HEDRI, 


I did not possess), could wrest from him that little 
box in which he found nourishment and strength, and 
in the fellow to which Seth Treloar had found death. 

Alone I could do nothing, but with the help of Jake 
— Jake whose clumsy movements would certainly 
have awakened the sleeper, I might by good luck 
have bound and robbed him, but I was alone, un- 
armed, and my wit failed me. 

I may have sate there a minute or an hour when 
with a half groan he turned on his side, and suddenly 
threw out an arm that fell sheer across my chest, 
and rested there. 

It had all the weight of a blow, and I trembled 
under the shock, it was so horribly unexpected ; 
but as the moments passed, and his regular breath- 
ing convinced me that he slept, I gradually shifted 
the lanthorn and cautiously stole a ray of light 
that shewed me his strong fingers closed tightly 
on the horn box that I was perilling my life 
to steal. 

Even had I the strength to unlock that iron grasp, 
he carried arms, and would shoot me like a dog before 
I could escape. Involuntarily I thought of those 
snake charmers and Hindoo jugglers who, by the 
skilful use of a feather, are able to make a sleeping 
man change his attitude or release his grip upon 
whatsoever he holds, but I had no such power to 


HEDRI. 


103 


make flaccid this man s muscles, and in sheer help- 
lessness and desperation I sate for what seemed to 
me a lifetime with that heavy arm weighing on my 
breast. 

What real length of time elapsed, I cannot say, but 
suddenly he turned with a. heavy groan, as if some 
spectre troubled his sleep, and his arm fell to the 
ground with a dull thud, then he fell to snoring 
loudly and regularly as before. 

Kneeling down, I ventured on a tiny shaft of light 
that showed me his relaxed hand lying on the 
ground, palm uppermost, with — and the sight of it 
nearly took my breath away for joy — the horn box 
loosely held in the relaxed fingers. 

For once in my life I ro.se to the emergency of the 
moment, and without hesitation slipped the box 
from beneath that nerveless touch, and stole away. 

But I had reckoned without that instinct, belong- 
ing of right only to animals, but found in savages and 
men who live almost entirely in the open air ; an 
instinct that becomes developed almost into a sixth 
sense, that keeps sentinel over the others while they 
sleep, and gives instant warning of danger. 

On the instant the Styrian awoke, found his hand 
empty, and held his breath to listen for the slightest 
sound that might give evidence of a stranger’s pres- 
ence. Then he swept his hand along the floor as 


104 


HEDRI. 


thinking he might have dropped what he missed, and, 
not finding it, hurled his huge weight out of bed, and 
I said to myself, “ Now, if he possesses a light I am a 
dead man,” and listened for the striking of a match, 
that, thank God ! did not come. 

I heard instead a click, ominous enough, and doubt- 
ing if in the darkness he so accurately knew the 
position of the staircase as to cover it successfully, I 
stooped down, and, getting on my hands and knees, 
crawled to the stair-head with all the speed I could 
command. 

Instantaneously, with the first sound I made, came 
a shot that passed directly over my head, and then 
the boards groaned under the Styrian’s weight as he 
dashed across the narrow room towards me, just miss- 
ing my heels as I slid down the stairs, checking my 
too rapid descent by grasping the low hand-rail that 
on one side guarded them. 

He fired again with the same result as before, then 
came thundering after me, but I had the start, and 
knew that if I could reach the secret door (which I 
had left open) I was safe. 

But even as I slipped through it, a sharp report 
and a stinging sensation in my right shoulder told 
me that I was hit, and I had barely drawn the door 
close behind me, when he fell against it with a crash 
that shook the whole place. 


HEDRI. 


105 

I heard him cursing and raging on the other side, 
completely baffled by my disappearance, and prob- 
ably not aware that he had winged me. 

Softly I slipped out at the other door, and sped 
down the winding path at the top of my speed, never 
drawing breath till I reached the nearest cottage, 
where lived a fisherman with his three stalwart sons, 
all soundly asleep, and with difficulty awakened. 

“ I have been shot at, and wounded by the man at 
Smuggler’s Hole,” I said, ‘‘ you must come with me 
at once and secure him.” 

The blood that dripped from my coat sleeve corro- 
borated my story plainly enough when the three 
joined me, but the emergency left no time for those 
explanations that I should have been puzzled to 
give, and no more was said till we arrived at the hut. 

Outside it we held a parley. . 

“ Him carries fire-arms,” said the old fisherman, 
“ an’ if aich wan o’ his bullets be so spry as this ’un,” 
and he touched my arm significantly. 

“ We must take him by surprise,” I said. “ While 
two of you beat at the front door and ask for me, the 
others must steal on him from behind, through the 
masked door. He will be parleying with you, and so 
we can easily overcome him without so much as a 
shot being fired.” 

So in the darkness, and without a murmuring word 


io6 


HEDRI. 


from any of them, our party divided, and my pulses 
beat fast, as, followed by two strong fellows, I entered 
the hidden room, and, advancing to the grating, 
looked in. 

The Styrian had kindled a light, and the sound of 
his curses came plainly to my ears as he stalked to 
and fro, raging at his inability to discover how the 
midnight thief had escaped. 

Even as I watched him his fury received a check, 
for loud and urgent came the summons from without, 
and the sound of rough voices calling on my name. 

For awhile he stood like an arrested statue of doubt 
and anger, then he strode to the door with a gesture 
as if he would drive away these unwelcome intruders, 
and on the instant I leaped silently out of my ambush, 
followed by the two men, and before he had time to 
turn in the narrow room we were upon him, and had 
pinioned both hands behind his back. 

He struggled and roared out as the pistol fell clatter- 
ing from his hand, and tore and kicked and bit at all 
three of us ; if his strength had not been so enormous, 
I think I should have felt ashamed of the uneven 
odds 'of three men against one, but as it was we 
found all our work cutout to secure him to the table, 
which was solid enough to fit a prison. 

Bound and humiliated, the Styrian shewed his 
teeth in a snarl of malignant hate as he looked up at 


me. 


HEDRI. 


107 


“You use your guests strangely in this country,” 
he said ; “ first you rob and then you deprive them of 
their liberty, and what do you expect to gain by it ? ” 
“ A woman s life,” I said, then all things grew dim 
before me, and with them faded the face that seemed 
to hide an urgent dread and fear beneath its mask of 
defiance and shame. 


HEDRL 


loS 


CHAPTER XIV. 

Fight on, my men, Sir Andrew says, 

A little I’m hurt, but not yet slain; 

I’ll but lie down and bleed awhile, 

And then I’ll rise and fight again.” 

The chill air was blowing in on me, and some rough 
surgery, pending the arrival of the doctor, was being 
applied to my arm, when I came to myself, and 
looked around. 

My eyes fell first upon Stephen, who returned my 
questioning gaze with another. 

Awh, whatever have ’un bin up to ? ” he said. 
“Sheddin’ o’ blid woant help he wi’ Judith, an’ he be 
but a raskill, too, t’ set upo’ ’ee like this.” , 

“ Stay here with me, and help watch him,” I said, 
then thanked the three fishermen (the fourth had gone 
for the doctor) for what they had done, rewarded 
them handsomely, and sent them away. 

They cast many a puzzled glance behind, undoubt- 
edly much exercised in their minds as to the mean- 
ing of the night’s work, and they had barely gone 
when the doctor’s cheery voice sounded without, 
and he came briskly in. He cast a comprehensive 
glance around, lifted his eyebrows slightly, then, with- 


HEDRL 


log 


out asking a question, proceeded to examine my 
arm. 

“ H’m, a pretty severe flesh wound,” he said, “ and 
the bullet must be probed for; you’ll have to come 
back with me to my place. Steve here will keep an 
eye on your prisoner. What brought you to such a 
hole as this ? ” he went on, looking at me keenly, then 
turning to bend a long gaze on the Styrian, “ and in 
such company ? ” 

He did not wait for an answer but hurried out. 
He had lived all his life in Trevenick, and had no 
doubt been called to more than one scene of blood- 
shed and violence under this roof. 

I followed him at once, leaving alone together the 
man who loved and was beloved of Judith, and the 
mart who loved and was scorned by her. 

“ Doctor,” I said, when a sufficiently painful quarter 
of an hour had been got through, and the Styrian’s 
bullet lay in my hand, “ is it possible for a man to take 
a quantity of arsenic daily with impunity, then die 
suddenly from the effects of it ? ” 

The doctor, who had been cleaning and replacing 
his instruments, turned to me quickly with a wicked- 
looking knife poised in his hand, and said, 

“ So you have not yet got rid of your insane idea 
that Seth Treloar poisoned himself 

“ No, I said firmly, and what’s more I am going to 


IZO 


HEDRL 


prove it. This box (I produced it) taken from that 
man while he slept to-night, is positive proof that he 
takes arsenic habitually ; and as he was a close com- 
panion of Seth Treloar’s for years, it is pretty certain 
that their habits as well as occupations were identical.” 

Dr. Cripps took the box from my hand, tasted a 
grain of its contents with a very wry face, then said, 

“ There’s enough here to kill a hundred men.” 

“You have not answered my question,” I said, and 
I repeated it. 

“ It is one I could not possibly answer,” he said, 
off-hand. “ It is unusual, extraordinary even for the 
body to assimilate large doses of an irritant poison, 
but I should say that once having violated Nature’s 
rules successfully, a man would not be likely to 
succumb to its effects.” 

My face fell, and the smart of my shoulder angered 
me as a useless and intolerable pain. 

“ So he shot you because you stole this,” said Dr. 
Cripps, the pallid morning light falling on his round 
weather-beaten face, at once homely and shrewd; 
“ then clearly he sets a high value on it, and I shall be 
curious to know how he gets on without it.” 

He spoke slowly as one who thought aloud, his 
hand arrested on its way to the table, and in his eyes 
I caught the slow glimmering of an idea. 

“ Seth Treloar was under the influence of the drug 


HEDRL 


III 


which Judith gave him for twenty-four hours,” he 
said, “ it would be dark when he came to himself, and 
he may have wandered round and round like a beast 
in a cage for hours, ignorant of the open trap-door 
over his head, and the rope by which he might gain 
it. Did he— did he—” 

“ Die for want of the poison that he was in the 
habit of taking at regular intervals ? ” I burst out, 
putting at last into words and shape the idea that had 
so constantly eluded me, and to which an indefinable 
something in the doctor’s face assisted me. 

“Exactly,” said Dr. Cripps, “and it strikes me we 
have now an excellent opportunity of finding out — 
that opportunity being furnished by the gentleman 
who is now sefely tied to the leg of your kitchen 
table. But what brought him here.?” he added 
suddenly. 

I told him the Styrian’s story from the beginning ; 
of his interview with Judith, and everything down to 
the present time. 

“ The game is in your own hands,” he said, when I 
stopped, “you have only to sit down and watch the 
man. If he shows symptoms of collapse, send for 
me, but it’s the most extraordinary — ” he paused 
abruptly. 

“ Poor girl,” he said in a moved voice, “ and I was 
ready, like all the rest of the world, to believe that 


12 


HEDRl. 


the sudden temptation overcame her, and turned a 
good woman into a bad one — but we don’t know yet. 
I must get to bed now for a couple of hours, for I’ve 
a harder day’s work before me, young man, than yours 
as amateur detective. And now you’ll go back and 
get some sleep yourself — I’ll look in after breakfast. 

And before I go out I’ll write to B the first 

toxicologist of the day, and ask him a few questions. 
I wish I had done so sooner.” 

And he disappeared upstairs, as I went out into 
the grey morning, more than satisfied with the night’s 
work, and full of hopes of what the next twenty-four 
hours should bring forth. 


HEDRi, 


”3 


CHAPTER XV. 

“ O, the one life within us and abroad, 

Which meets all motion and becomes its soul, ‘ 

A light in sound, a sound like power in light 
Rhythm in all thought, and joyance everywhere.” 

It was midday when I woke from the heavy slumber 
into which I fell from pure exhaustion on my return 
from Dr. Cripps, my limbs aching from the hard 
chair in which I had slept, and with what felt like the 
brand of a red hot iron deep in my shoulder. 

I looked across to the bound figure by whose side 
was set cup and platter, both untouched, though the 
wolfish look of hunger and craving that met mine put 
me in mind of nothing so much as a starving, hunted 
dog. Had his torment commenced already ? It 
would have to be sharpened yet before I wasted a 
word upon him. Stephen sate in the open door- 
way, a patient, pathetic figure, whose attitude spoke 
to his hopeless despair, and whose eyes were blind to 
the glory of the scene upon which he gazed. 

He looked up apathetically as I joined him, too 
engrossed in his own sorrow to heed me much. 

Th’ sun woant rise many mo’ times upo’ her, 

8 


HEDRL 


1 14 

poor sawl,” he said, looking out at the living joy of the 
sea, “ it ’ull a’ be dark whar she lies, tho’ th’ flowers 
’ll bloom as swate, an’ th’ birds sing as loud as iver 
over her head, ay, an’ th’ little ’un ’ll laff the whiles 
my heart is breakin’.” 

“You’ll see many a sunrise together yet,” I said 
cheerfully, “ ay, and many a sunset too. Keep a 
close watch on that fellow. I shall get something to 
eat in the village, it would choke me to eat in his 
presence,” and I stepped over the threshold as a 
captive escaping from his dungeon. 

Hatless, I roamed forth with the sea, air, and sky 
for company, feeling brain and body rested with 
every step I took, and drinking in all the sweet influ- 
ences of the morning with a joy to which I had long 
been a stranger. 

“ Soon,” thought I, “Judith’s elastic step will tread 
this cliff, and she will look up free as air to heaven, 
innocent before God and man, and already forgetting 
those gates of death that so lately yawned to receive 
her. 

“ In the grave lo ! all things are forgotten, and in 
life, man, if he be happy, does not remember, he 
just breathes and rejoices in the mere sense of being ; 
and the fretted arch of the blue above, the balmy air 
that blows from inland to the shore, and the thousand 
scents of the blossoming spring will speak to her in 


HEDRL 


"5 


soft whispers of the happy years to come with the 
lover who clung to her when all the world passed her 

*>y 

“ Instead of everlasting silence, the laughter of happy 
voices.; in place of the worm’s cold touch, the sweet 
clinging of her infant’s fingers, and instead of the 
accursed memory of theglayer of innocent blood, the 
honest savour and sweetness of an honorable and 
blameless life.” 

In fancy I roamed besid^ the pair, and tasted all 
the keenness of their delight. I seemed to see the 
bruised spirit of the man revive, and lift itself as a 
flower stretches upward to the sunlight, the bowed 
form once more erect, and the light in his clouded 
eyes shining gladly forth upon his fellows. 

On and on I wandered from cliff to cliff, feeling 
only the springing turf, the wooing, whispering air, 
seeing but the mingled glory of sea and sky, and 
those tender hues of spring that spread over the land, 
like the sudden laughter upon the face of a very 
young child. 

No occasion had I for haste, rather a secret 
necessity behind all this tumult of joy Bade me linger 
and spend lavishly the hours of this glorious day, so 
that many might elapse before I returned tc the hut, 
and gauged the effect that the progress of time had 
made on the Styrian. 


ii6 


HEDRL 


Ought not the thought of that caged wretch to 
have taken all the spring out of my limbs, the elixir 
out of my morning cup ? Did not those wolfish eyes 
haunt me with their dumb cry for what I had stolen 
from him like any common thief? 

No! they disturbed me as little as did the smart- 
ing pain in my shoulder, felt, indeed, but disregarded 
in the triumphant exultation of my mood. For I 
was buoyed up by more than hope ; a sense of victory, 
even, possessed me, and the mere touch of the horn 
box in my breast pocket gave me a physical feeling 
of success impossible to describe. 

In less than twenty-four hours — that was the limit 
I had set to the Styrian’s powers of endurance with- 
out his drug— I should know its secret, whether life or 
death, and it would go hard with me if Dr. Cripps 
and I did not between us wring a confession from 
him that would clear the woman to whom he was 
acting so basely. 

Presently the delightful pang, delightful when one 
sees a prospect of allaying it, whose name is hunger, 
assailed me. 

The man who sleeps, dines, says the proverb, but 
I was well satisfied with my appetite now I had found 
it. 

I had passed, far below me, more than one fisher- 
man’s cottage nestled like a white sea-gull upon a spur 


HEDRI, 


7 


of the cliff but when I came in sight of the next, I 
descended with some difficulty, and explained my 
wants to the good woman within. 

“ Awh,” she said, scanning me closely with the 
clear, reasonable eye, that seems peculiar to the 
fisherfolk, “ ’ee can bide a bit. I seed ’ee war a 
stranger when ’ee corned overtop o’ th’ cliff, m’appen 
’ee be th’ chap fro’ Trevenick as is livin’ to Smuggler’s 
Hole ? ” she added with a sudden change of tone as 
she set bread and fish on the table. 

“YeSj I’m the chap from Trevenick,” I said, “and 
to all appearance you haven’t heard much in my 
favour.” 

“ Naw,” she said coldly, “ I ha’nt heard much to 
you’m credit. Why couldn’t ’ee let a poor sawl be, 
’stead o’ doin’ constable’s work, when, as I hear tell, 
’ee be rich eno’ to do nothin’ fo’ a livin ’ } But laws, 
little perky folks is alius up to mischief! ” 

She stood with her magnificent arms akimbo, 
looking as if for two pins she would have taken and 
shaken me like a rat. 

But I was hungry and I was happy, so I ate and 
drank diligently, answering her not a word. 

“ ’Iss,” she went on with a grand disregard for the 
laws of hospitality, “ ’iss, you’m rich, an’ Judith’s poor, 
’ee ’ve got th’ best o’ ’un, but if iver a sawl went 
inn’cent to her crool death, that sawl be Judith 
Croft.” 


i8 


HEDRL 


She spoke the last word defiantly as if inviting 
contradiction, and I said to myself, “Judith is richer 
than she thinks, for she possesses one friend in the 
world besides Stephen.” 

Aloud I said, 

“You are the first woman I have heard express 
any doubt of Judith’s guilt.” 

The fisherman’s wife laughed angrily. 

“ Does ’em knaw her so well as I knaw her ? ” 
she said ; “ her niver made but wan fren’ ’mongst th’ 
women, and I war that wan, an’ I knawed her inside 
an’ out as well as -a page o’ thicky Bible upo’ that 
shelf” 

“And yet you have never been near her,” I said, 
“ I have heard her say that she had not one friend in 
the world save Stephen Croft.” 

“ Awh,” said the woman sadly, “ ’tis true ’nuff, if 
frens is reckoned by frenly actions, but my baw, he 
be terrible masterful, an’ when Judith war took, him 
ses to me, ‘ I forbids ’ee t^ go anighst her ; how- 
somedever frens ’ee was, her baint fit for an honest 
woman stand by naw.’ An’ I could niver make ’un 
bliev’ her warn’t t’ blame. ‘ Bison be pison,’ ses he, 
^ an’ who wanted ’un out o’ th’ way so bad as her 
did ? ’ An’ ivery baw i’ th’ village blinkit at his wife, 
as if so be her moight ha’ got th’ same notion in her 
head toward ’un.” 


HEDRI. 


119 

“ If she did not kill him,” I said, “ how then did he 
die?” 

“ How can I tell ’ee ? ” she said scornfully. “ God 
a’mighty’s got His own way o’ takin’ off folks, an’ 
praps God a’mighty war angry wi’ Seth for cornin’ 
home an’ meddlin’ in what he’d spoilt enufif aready. 
I niver could abide meddlers mysel’.” 

“ Why were all the women so hard on her ? ” I 
said, pushing back my chair from the table; “judging 
by what I have heard, she never tried to take away 
a lover from any one of them.” 

“ Do ’ee think her’d any need t’ try ? ” said the 
woman contemptuously ; “ wheriver she war, thar war 
the one woman, th’ rest o’ em was pale shadders, an’ 
th’ men could as liev’ deny th’ sun war shinin’ as keep 
their eyes fro’ strayin’ to she. Laws, I always makes 
’lowance fo’ handsome folks — seems as if ’em warnt 
meant fo’ jest wan sawl’s happiness, but Judith 
niver wanted no ’lowance made for she. Her war 
made fo’ luv’, but somethin’ in her kep’ her straight, 
an luv’ she niver took, an’ niver knawed, till Steve 
corned t’ Trevenick, an’ years upo’ years they passed 
wan anither by wi’ on’y their eyes to speak th’ warld 
o’ luv’ ’atween ’em. An’ th’ gigles was all as mad as 
mad, ’cos he wouldna look at ’em, an’ th’ baws was 
bitter an’ wild ’cos Judith preferred he, an’ so it was 
that she’d narry a fren’ ’mong ’em all but me, an’ ’tis 


20 


HEDRI. 


little ’nuff good I’se been to she. If yo’ see her (the 
woman’s voice softened, and tears stood in her eyes) 
“ will ’ee tell her that ‘ Lizabeth ’ have carried a sair 
heart ’pon her account, but her daurna disobey her 
man, an’ her hant ’nuff book lamin’ to write her a 
letter.” » 

“ Yes,” I said, “ I’ll tell her, but you will be able to 
do it yourself before long.” 

“ Naw,” she said, “that can niver be. An’ do her 
find it in her heart to frogive ’ee } ” she added 
bitterly ; “ but the lamb alius looks up piteouslike to 
the butcher, an’ praps her spirits that broke, her 
blood be turned to watter.” 

“Her spirit is not broken yet,” I said. “Stephen 
Croft is the more downcast of the two.” 

“ An’ ther’ll be th’ little ’un,” went on the woman 
sadly, and now the tears fell heavily on her breast, 
“ what’ll ’un do wi’out ’un’s mother ? Pr’aps my man 
’ud let me take ’un — fo’ a’ he’m so set agen her. 
Awh, but ’tis a crooked warld. Years an’ years my 
arms has ached fo’ want o’ a child t’ fill ’em, an’ 
here’s Judith ’ull ha’ that gied t’ her that her cant 
keep.” 

“ Please God, she shall,” I said gravely, “and your 
man shall give her a warm welcome, and ask her 
forgiveness for his ill thoughts of her. And perhaps,” 
I added (for she had really touched me), “you’ll for- 
give me, too, some day.” 


HEDRI, 


I2I 


“Naw,” she said with spirit, “that I niver will. I 
baint no scholard, but I spelled out ivery word ’ee 
tolled up agen her, an’ from fust to last I thought 
’ee a fule, an’ a meddlin’ fule, as is wuss nor all. But 
’ee niver knawed her, an’ how she niver did Seth an 
ill turn, fo’ a’ th’ crool things ’un did to she ; th’ ony 
desate her iver shawed ’un war when she gied ’un th’ 
stuff to make ’un slape, when he war like a figger on 
wires wi’ th’ tremblins. I knawed it, an’ I niver 
blamed ’un ; her’d a bin murdered times an’ times 
but fo’ quietin’ o’ ’un.” 

“And yet,” I said, “ it played her false in the end. 
If she had not given Seth Treloar a dose of it the 
night he came home, she might have been made a 
miserable woman, but she would never have been 
accused of his murder. It was the one mistake she 
made in her otherwise blameless life.” 

“’Iss,” she said, “the only wan — an’ ’ee ’m found 
out that, have ’ee } After ’ee’d got ’un into gaol, an’ 
wove the rope to hang ’un — awh ! ” she added in a 
low tone of disgust, “ let yer pity bide t’ home, 
man, ’tis like nothin’ so much as a bitter swate apple 
to my thinkin’.” 

I shrugged my shoulders, laid some silver on the 
table, and was turning away when my money came 
flying past me, hurled by a vigourous hand, and fol- 
lowed by as vigourous a tongue till I got well out of 
hearing. 


122 


HEDRI. 


But as I climbed the cliff I felt only gladness that 
Judith had one such faithful friend, and she a 
woman. 

That evening there was one of the grandest Sunsets 
that I ever witnessed on the Cornish coast. 

Glorious as the day had been, it clouded some- 
what about five, and gradually an indigo-blue cloud 
spread itself along the horizon, here and there parting 
like a curtain to disclose a wall of flame that shewed 
vividly against the deep purple-black of the sea line. 
As the sun sank lower, by almost imperceptible de- 
grees the dark cloud moved upwards, and between 
the sea and sky a pale rose colour breathed softly out- 
wards, ever growing and widening until (and I knew 
not where the darkness went) it had spread itself 
over all. To me as I watched, it shewed as a 
Titanic struggle between the powers of good and 
evil, in which the good was triumphantly victorious. 

Away to the right pure amber clouds, touched with 
fire, rose like altars lit by God, and higher yet, a pale 
primrose sky merged into a wind-freshened blue 
vault, up to which I looked, and reverently asked my- 
self if indeed it were not an omen of hope. ^ 

Long would I have gazed, but Nature’s grandest 
effects are made with as much swiftness as ease, and 
our perception must travel at lightning speed to 
keep up with her. When she had flung her last 


HEDRL 


123 


changing colour on that canvas which knows no 
limit, when sea and sky had become fused into one 
calm translucent flood of liquid light, that more 
purely suggests peace than any other heavenly or 
earthly thing within our ken, I unwillingly turned 
away from its loveliness and set my face tov/ards the 
hut, where a very different sight awaited me. 


124 


HEDRI, 


CHAPTER XVI. 

“ O, they hae fought for twa lang hours ; 

When twa lang hours were come and gone, 

The sweat drapped fast frae aflf them baith, 

But a drap of blude could not be seen.” 

Twilight was lengthening into dusk when I came 
in sight of Smuggler’s Hole, and the motionless 
figure of Stephen sitting across the threshold. 

Silent he sate, but the cliff was alive with mov- 
ing figures, and half a dozen old gaffers and gam- 
mers had crowded their heads against the narrow 
casement, and were peeping in. 

At my approach they slunk away, but not far, and 
I heard broken ejaculations of pity and horror escape 
them, as if moved by some deplorable spectacle upon 
which they had just gazed. I did not stop to question 
Stephen, but passed in, and saw that a frightful 
change had come over the Styrian during my absence. 
His face was absolutely livid, and out of that ghastly 
pallor burned two eyes that expressed a craving and 
agony such as I pray God I may never see in a human 
face again. 

He had torn open his embroidered vest as if to 


HEDRI. 


125 


gain air, and every few minutes he was shaken by a 
convulsive shudder that he strove to check with the 
locked arms that he pressed downwards across his 
body. Beside him stood the cup and platter, abso- 
lutely untouched. 

“You are ill ?” I said, approaching him. 

He looked at me as a dying man might at another 
who withheld from him the cup of cold water for 
which his soul fainted, or as a mother at the execu- 
tioner of her first-born, then he ground his teeth, and 
turned those dreadful eyes away, the spirit not being 
broken in him yet. 

“ If you are hungry, eat,” I said, hardening my 
heart against him as I thought of Judith, watching 
day by day the slow progress of a death from which, 
but for his vile selfishness, he might save her. 

He looked at me, and had I ventured within his 
reach then, he would have throttled the life out of 
me with those muscular fingers that writhed in and 
out of each other, never for one moment still. Indeed 
he seemed rapidly passing from under his own control, 
and reminded me of a dram-drinker who is suddenly 
and totally deprived of the stimulant upon which he 
has mainly supported his existence. 

I turned away and drew down the blind, shutting 
out the furtive faces, white against the dusk, who were 
peering in, and then I bade Stephen close the door 


126 


HEDRL 


also and come in, which he did, and having kindled 
a fire and lights, I questioned him as to what had 
gone forward in my absence. 

“ I doant knaw what ’un wants,” said Stephen, in 
the faint weary voice of one who had not touched food 
that day, “not meat an' drink fo’ sure, him’s got 
plenty, an’ I broffed 'un whiskey but 'un woudn’t ha't, 
but 'tis summut 'un wants ter’ble bad, an' 'un keeps 
on clamourin’ i’ that furrin' lingo t’ get 'un.” 

“ Has Dr. Cripps been here } ” I said. 

“ ’Iss, an' ’un on'y grinned, and sed yon chap 'ud 
be wuss afore ’un war better, an’ ’un war cornin' back 
t' bide th’ night wi’ ee, an’ 'spected Judith an’ me ’ud 
hear summut t’ s’prise us afore we was much older.” 

“ Good,” I said, intensely relieved to hear of Dr. 
Cripps's intention, and then I drew my chair to the 
fire, and bade Steve take the other, keeping my eyes 
turned away from that horrible figure in the back- 
ground. 

Gradually the warmth and rest overpowered my 
tired limbs and I slept. 

In my dreams I found myself in an Indian jungle, 
with the savage roar of some wild beast at a distance 
drawing each moment nearer to me, and I woke at 
last to find that the sound was real, and on glancing 
at the clock saw that I had slept three hours. 

I sate up, and looked at the Styrian from whom 


HEDRl, 


127 


the last vestige of self-restraint had fallen, and could 
no longer control the cries that he had hitherto by 
sheer physical force succeeded in strangling. 

“ Him ha’ bin clamourin’ t’ me to wake ’ee,” said 
Stephen, whose features bore more than their usual 
impress of pain, “ leastways, so I guessed ’un to mane. 
Look ’ee, I’m thinkin’ him ’ll be dead by mornin’!” 

“ My box, give me my box ! ” shrieked the Styrian, 
straining at his cords as if he would burst them. Give 
it to me, give ! You can sleep, devil, while I die here, 
and you are committing a murder as she did when she 
kept Seth Treloar for twenty-four hours without — ” he 
stepped abruptly, and a crafty look overspread his 
livid face. 

But he had said enough. I saw that he could have 
bitten his teeth out for the slip. 

I talk madly,” he exclaimed, making a supreme 
effort that I could not but admire; “ keep what you 
stole, I can do without it. But set me free, put me 
on the road to the nearest town, and you shall be 
troubled with me no more.” 

“ I will set you free,” I said deliberately, “ and I 
will give you back your box of poison, if you will give 
me in writing a full confession of how you taught 
Seth Treloar to use it, of the effect produced by a 
sudden cessation of the doses, and other particulars 
that you will know how to furnish.” 


12S 


HEDRI. 


The Styrlan^s eyes searched my face for any sign 
of relenting, then turned them upon Stephen Croft, 
who had dropped into a weary sleep, his golden head 
leaning against the wall, but more really beautiful in 
the unconsciousness of sleep than even in his waking 
moments. 

The man’s eyes darkened as they gazed upon him. 

What ! He should leave those two glorious, pas- 
sionately loving creatures to be happy in each other’s 
arms, while he, he went back like a fool to his own 
country without the bride he had travelled so far and 
hazardously to fetch t 

Thus I read the expression of his working features 
and yet he took me by surprise when he said, 

“ I can die, but I will not give her up to him. After 
all, the worst suffering is now over, and a few hours 
more will see it out. Let the poor fool be happy 
with her in his dreams, for in life he never shall be. 
My dying will soon be over — theirs is to come. 

The malignity of his look and voice froze me, then 
his head sank on his breast, and his hair, matted with 
sweat, hid his face from me. 

And my heart went cold, for I had never counted 
on such resolution, and I was loath to have his blood 
upon my soul. 


HEDRI, 


129 


Looking back after long years on that night, I seem 
to feel and hear the intense stillness in which I waited 
for the sound of Dr. Cripps’ approaching feet, a sound 
that never came. Later, I knew that a railway acci- 
dent a few miles away had kept him hard at work of 
the most painful description until past dawn, but then 
I blamed him bitterly for failing me when I most 
wanted his counsel. For as the hours went by, each 
moment a hell to the man I watched, as it was an 
hour of torture to me who beheld him, I expected 
each moment that death would come to the rescue, 
and so he and his secret would escape me for ever. 

How was I to tell where real suffering ended, and 
simulation began when I had not even his face to 
guide me ? 

Surely no man had ever a nicer calculation to make, 
or one requiring more judgment and medical know- 
ledge, than I had then, for though I felt myself 
morally justified in pushing my experiment and his 
endurance to the utmost limit, I knew that I was 
actually guilty of murder if he died under the test. 
And the skilled intelligence that could have lifted 
that heavy burden from my shoulders tarried yet, so 
that twice I sent Stephen in search of Dr. Cripps, and 
was now awaiting his second return. With a bitter 
sense of powerlessness I felt myself reduced to one of 
two courses : to restore the man’s poison to him, and 


130 


HEDRI, 


with it his life, or to withhold it, and so inflict on him 
death, and, as a natural consequence, on Judith also. 

How long, I asked myself impotently, might a man 
writhe in unrelieved tortures not to be surpassed by 
any in Dante’s Inferno, and yet retain life in his 
racked body? Would not his resolution by infinitesi- 
mal degrees give way, and that confession spring to 
his lips which would lift him from the pains of purga- 
tory into the peace of heaven ? 

I have since thought that it might have done, had 
not Stephen been present to keep alive in him the 
jealous hatred that devoured him. And to this day 
I believe that if Judith’s love had been an ordinary 
fisherman, instead of in the likeness of a young Greek 
god, the Styrian would have gone his way with that 
raging devil unaroused in him, which even prompted 
self-slaughter, rather than the surrender of her to one 
so infinitely his superior. 

But my blunder in bringing the two men together 
was on a par with my other mistakes, and, like them, 
irreclaimable. And I began to think that my latest 
achievement in engaging the Styrian in a duel of 
wills, out of which, dead or alive, he must emerge 
victorious, was but the biggest mistake of all. 

And truly I could not but feel admiration for this 
wretch (who put me forcibly in mind of that fabled 
boy who suffered the fox to gnaw out his heart rather 


HEDRI, 


13 * 


than cry out) whose heroic absence of sound or word 
(since once he had taken his resolve) only impressed 
the more vividly his agony upon me, and yet I sate 
there watching like a stone, or a devil, with the means 
of relieving it lying idle to my hand. 

If he died, would his death be proof presumptive 
that Seth Treloar died in the same way, not from the 
effects of the poison, but from the cessation of it ? 

Suddenly it struck on me like a chill blow that 
this man had been my guest, that I had no one to 
bring forward as witness that he administered the 
arsenic to himself, that the box was even then in my 
possession, and, if he were found dead, I should be in 
precisely the same position as Judith had filled, and 
possibly found guilty, as she had been, of a crime I 
had never committed. True, Dr. Cripps knew the 
circumstance, but he could only quote my unsup- 
ported testimony, which would go for nothing. And 
as all these things dawned upon me I said to myself 
that verily the Styrian’s revenge upon me, as upon 
Judith, would be .complete indeed. 

A man’s guilt — and very often his success — is 
decided by the way he rises to an emergency or 
quails before it, and I must confess that I failed 
before this one, and did not think or do any one of 
the hundred things that an heroic man would have 
done easily in my place. I just waited in a sort of 


132 


HEDRI. 


sullen stupor for events to take their course, for Dr. 
Cripps to turn up, or for the man to think better of 
his suicidal obstinacy, or for some command from my 
innermost self that I dared not disobey, but neither 
Cripps, nor the Styrian’s repentance, nor my spiritual 
orders arrived, though something else did, with all 
the swiftness of a genuine catastrophe. 

A long convulsive shiver suddenly passed through 
the Styrian’s body, then his head fell forward above 
the arms clenched across his heart, and he was still. 

Cold as the dead, I gazed, and all the irrevocable- 
ness of my deed rushed upon me. I knew then the 
sensations of the murderer, whose hand has in one 
moment substituted death for life, and who stands 
appalled at the awful image he has created. 

Like him, I would have flown from the sight that 
will never leave him more by night nor by day, but 
an inward power compelled me, and making my way 
to the Styrian, I threw myself down beside the 
huddled up, stirless figure. 

I touched his hands, they were ice — his heart, and 
could find no beat; then an awful sense of his 
presence, of being alotie with this murdered spirit, we 
two apart, and for ever face to face, while heaven and 
earth fell away, seized me, and with a cry in my ears 
of Where is now thy brother Abel ? ” I fell down- 
wards across the Styrian’s feet. 


HEDRI. 


*33 


CHAPTER XVII. 

But see, the traitor’s yet alive, 

Now bitterly he shall abye 

And vengeance fall upon his head.” 

What happened after was such a confused medley 
of fact and imagination, that I find it difficult to 
describe what really happened. 

I thought I fell headlong down a pit of darkness to 
have my throat seized by strong hands, that choked 
my gasping breath as it rose, while my temples 
seemed bursting with the wave of blood that surged 
upwards, until a dull stupour crept over me, in which 
I felt no pain. Suddenly, I was dragged out of it by 
a vigourous wrench that set me free of those iron 
fingers, and I was flung aside, scarce knowing if I 
were the victim of a realistic dream, or awake, and 
roughly treated in very prosaic fashion indeed. 

But even as I lay there, stunned and stupid, 
the lightning consciousness of what I had done 
flashed through my mind, and I covered my face 
with my arms and groaned aloud. 

Immediately I felt a touch on my shoulder, and 
Steve’s voice sounded in my ear. 


134 


HEDRI, 


** Be *cc much hurt ? ” he inquired anxiously ; ** yon 
devil war close ’pon finishin* ’ee off when I corned in. 
What iver made ’ee go'a’nigst ’un ? ” 

I dragged myself up and saw — O God ! a sight 
that made me the happiest man alive. For there, the 
lividness gone from his face, and the raging agony of 
his eyes changed to an expression of mocking triumph, 
sate the man of whom I had believed myself to be 
the murderer for the few most awful moments of my 
life. 

“Thank God!” I cried, forgetful of Judith, for- 
getful of everything, save that I was not to be followed 
by the accursed shadow of blood-guiltiness for the 
rest of my days. 

“ Tss,” said Stephen, “ ’ee may well say that. Him 
have robbed ’ee too — he’m got the box ’ee set so 
much store ’pon, an’ swallowed some o’ what be 
inside.” 

I uttered an exclamation, and looked at the 
Styrian. 

Ay, by artifice he had overcome me, and obtained 
the medicine that was his life, and healthy vigour 
once more flowed through his blood, and shewed in 
his natural fresh colour, and for a considerable time, 
at least, he could defy me. 

He laughed as our eyes met, and a glow of intense 
triumph overspread his features. 


HEDRI. 135 

You are beaten,” he said, “ confess it, and let me 
go in peace. You will hardly care to go through 
the experience of last night again, and I see you have 
scruples about taking a man’s life. I had none 
whatever about relieving you of yours, and if yonder 
fellow had not returned ” he paused signifi- 

cantly, and I perfectly understood him. 

“ I should have cut my cords with your pocket- 
knife,” he continued coolly, “ and walked out. 
Curse that interfering fool,” and he darted a savage 
look at Stephen. 

“ And now you will do nothing of the sort,” I said ; 
“ it will be easy enough to take that box from you, 
and I have plently time, I can afford to wait until 
you tire of this game.” 

His face fell, and I saw that he had not expected 
my stubbornness to hold out any longer. 

“ So be it,” he said with affected indifference, “ but 
living you will no more be able to drag a word from 
me than dead. She alone can make me speak, but if 
she will not — ” he shrugged his shoulders in com- 
pletion of the sentence. 

I left him, and went to the open door, for my head 
was still giddy, and my throat sore from the Styrian’s 
grasp. 

Dawn was breaking in sober guise, a chilly wind 
blew up from the sea, as I gazed abroad methought 


136 


HEDRI. 


the spirit of spring had folded her wings and stolen 
away in the night, taking with her the warm hopes 
that ran riot but yesterday in my breast. 

I felt helpless as a derelict that drifts hither and 
thither at the mercy of the waves, for I had no power 
within to guide myself or others. 

Yesterday I had regarded myself as master of the 
situation, to-day I knew that the Styrian held the 
key of it, and would indifferently live or die with it 
in his possession. 

Involuntarily I took the way that led to Dr. 
Cripps’ house, and arrived at his gate just. in time to 
see him driving up in his shabby cart, looking 
thoroughly jaded and fagged out. 

“ Well, man,” he said, irascibly, as I opened my 
lips to speak, “ what do you want with me at this 
hour ? ” 

“Want with you?” I said indignantly in my turn, 
“ why, you forget that man, you promised to watch 
him with me last night, and — ” 

“ Promised a fiddlestick,” he said, throwing the 
reins to a Cornish lad who hurried up, “I’ve had 
other fish to fry. A dozen killed, five and thirty 
mangled in the worst railway accident we ever had 
hereabouts, what time do you think I have had to 
bother about your Styrian ? ” 

And he walked stiffly into the house, pausing 
inside to call back, 


HEDRI. 


137 


“I must get some sleep and then I’ll come down. 
Is the man dead ? ” 

“No, but I’ll bet my night has been a worse one 
than yours.” 

I thought I heard a fierce grumble in the distance 
as I moved away, bitterly disappointed, but yet with 
a wholesome sense of correction that helped to brace 
up my unstrung nerves. 

I set myself resolutely to walk, and so transfer my 
trouble of mind to fatigue of muscles, and soon felt 
the desired effect ; my mind grew calm, the strain 
upon me relaxed, I regarded the night and its events 
dispassionately, asking myself in what better way I 
could have acted, and whether indeed I had not 
been imposed upon and hoaxed by a consummate 
actor. But no, the Styrian’s sufferings had been very 
real, and I could not but believe that, though he so 
cleverly simulated death as to out-match me, yet 
that death itself trod hard on the heels of his coun- 
terfeit, and only by a hair’s breadth had I escaped a 
crime. 

It was, I thought, natural enough that he should 
try to take the life of a man who had in cold blood 
almost taken his, and I bore him no malice, and 
possibly thought it would have been nobody’s loss, 
nor mine either, if he had. 

And then my thoughts turned to Judith, and of 


138 HEDRI, 

how, through the long night, life must have beckoned 
her with alluring finger, bidding her turn away from 
death and Stephen to fulfil her allotted span, and to 
find peace, ay, and even happiness, as time slowly 
blotted out the past. But alas ! for Judith, she was 
no time server, no trader in love, but one who 
threw down her one queenly gift in all its integrity 
and had no power to take from or add to it more. 

Except his altogether remarkable beauty, and his 
faithfulness to her, I could not see anything in Ste- 
phen Croft to awaken such a passion, but the woman 
evidently thought differently, and after all a man 
more usually accepts the dictum of the other sex upon 
him than that of his own. 

I had walked many miles, and the sun was well up, 
when I suddenly thought of going to see her; true, it 
was early, but prison life was earlier, and I had no 
fear of being refused admittance. 

The clock was striking six as I turned in at the 
■gaol gates, and already a busy activity reigned with- 
in and without the building. 

But though admitted to the governor’s room with- 
out comment, I was not destined to see Judith on 
that or many subsequent days. 

The matron came to me, and with some excite- 
ment, and a pretty color on her wholesome cheek, 
informed me that Judith had been taken ill imme- 


HEDRI. 


139 


diatcly after we had departed yesterday, and that 
half an hour ago her babe had seen the light, 

“ She is doing well? ” I exclaimed. 

“ Yes,” was the reply, but when I inquired for the 
child, she shook her head. 

“ Still-born, a boy,” she ^aid, “ and please, would 
I tell Stephen Croft?” 


140 


HEDRI. 


CHAPTER XVIII. 

Married wi’ me ye sail ne’er be nane 
(Blaw, blaw, blaw winds, blaw) ; 

I’ll male’ me a sark without a seam 

(And the wind has blawn my plaid awa’).” 

I TOOK Stephen out on the cliff and told him. He 
turned so white, I thought he would have fallen, then 
his head sank, and he muttered, “ Poor sawl, that 
partin’ be over,” and then strode off as if he wore 
seven league boots to inquire for her. 

I wondered if they would let him in, if these two 
poor helpless souls might be permitted to mingle 
their tears over the little prematurely blighted flower, 
and I thought that God would have shown more 
mercy had He garnered mother and child together, 
since I found no certainty in my hopes now. 

I could not face the house and my triumphant 
prisoner, and remained abroad till I saw Dr. Cripps’ 
rotund person climbing the path, far more rapidly, 
too, than usual, I thought. 

Even at the distance I was, I perceived a beaming 
cheerfulness in his broad face that distinctly irritated 


me. 


HEDRI. 


141 

“It is all very well for you,” I growled to myself, 
“ who have been doing your duty nobly all night, 
and since slept like a top for some hours, and eaten 
a good breakfast, but I’ve done none of these things, 
and been made a fool of into the bargain.” 

When a, few hundred yards distant, he spied me, 
and brandished in the air something that looked 
yellow or pink, shouting out “ Hurrah ! ” at the same 
time, as loudly as his scarcity of breath would 
permit. 

I wondered what he found to hurrah at, as I 
advanced to meet him, but my ill-humour gave way 
to rapture as he shouted out, “Judith is saved, man, 
saved ! Read this, and this,” and he thrust several 
telegraphic sheets into my hand. 

“ There’s a good fellow for you,” he said, “ only got 
my letter at eight, answer here by nine, and a boy has 
walked two miles with it from the telegraphic office. 
Evidently deeply interested, and thinks me a fool, of 
course, but how’s a poor devil in the desert to keep 
up with all the new discoveries in town.” 

The message — it was a long one — ran thus : — 

‘‘ In 1875, at the forty-eighth annual meeting of the 
German Society of Naturalists and Physicians, which 
was held at Gratz, Dr. Knapp, practising in Styria, 
introduced two male arsenic eaters to the assembly. 
One of these men consumed in their presence above 


142 


HEDRL 


six grains of white arsenic — that is, enough to poison 
three men — without suffering the slightest incon- 
venience; he stated he had been accustomed to this 
sort of thing for years, and that it was a practice 
common among ox-herds and shepherds in Styria. 
One peculiarity of arsenic eating is this, that, when a 
man has once begun to indulge in it,’ he must con- 
tinue to indulge, for, if he ceases, the arsenic in his 
system poisons him, or, as it is popularly expressed, 
the last dose kills him. Indeed, the arsenic eater 
must not only continue in his indulgence, he must 
also increase the quantity of the drug, so that it is 
extremely difficult to stop the habit, for, as sudde7i 
cessatiofi causes deaths the gradual cessation produces 
such a terrible heart-gnawing, that it may probably 
be said that no genuine arsenic eater ever ceased to 
eat arsenic while life lasted. The fact is unprece- 
dented in the annals of toxicology ; and, though in- 
credible, it is true that our bodies, which may be 
annihilated with two grains of a white powder, may 
be so far changed as to require, nay, even to crave for, 
a daily heavy dose of this same poison. In Styria 
this arsenic poisoning goes by the name of ‘ Hedri.’ 
Full medical report follows by post.” 

When I had read to the last word, and the famous 
name appended, I threw my hat up in the air, I 
stamped, I shouted, I could have rolled on the turf 


HEDRI. 


143 


in my extravagant joy and then I seized the little 
doctor’s hands, and nearly wrung them off his arms. 

“ Stop ! ” he cried, “ stop ! who would have thought 
you were so strong ? ” then I let him go so suddenly 
that he nearly fell backwards, and back I tore into 
Smuggler’s Hole. 

“ Keep your box ! ” I shouted, “ keep it and bad 
luck to you! Your secret is no secret now, and the 
woman you could have saved, and would not, is 
saved without you. Listen — ” and standing opposite 
him, while Dr. Cripps placidly sate down just inside 
the door, I translated the telegram in Austrian to 
him. 

“ So,” he said calmly, though his face was that of 
a defeated devil, “ you English are not such fools as 
I supposed. You do sometimes hear of what goes on 
in other places; but you have poor stomachs — you 
are not strong men like we are, and our meat is your 
poison.” 

“ Thank God, yes ! ” I cried, “ we can support life 
without being slaves to a degrading habit such as 
yours.” 

The Styrian thrust out his lips with a gesture of 
utter contempt. 

“Have you any bad habit that can shew such 
results as ours ? ” he said scornfully, “ or any drug 
that will make the skin and hair sleek and glossy, 


HEDRI. 


H4 

just as it will make an animal plump, and strengthen 
its breathing organs ? It gives us clearness of skin, 
and increased powers of digestion ; it enables our 
herdsmen laden with heavy burdens to climb moun- 
tains without fatigue, and it gives us courage, the 
courage that comes of perfect health and strength. 
Look you, Seth Treloar came to me with bones 
showing through his skin, and only one thought in his 
mind, how he could get drink. I soon taught him 
there was something better than drink, and he began 
with very small doses ; he suffered burning pains in 
the mouth, throat and stomach, for he was no hardy 
mountaineer, whose forefathers had eaten arsenic from 
generation to generation, and who commenced the 
practice in early youth, but I kept his courage up, and 
soon he got to love it as he had loved his drink. 
Cursed be the day,” he went on savagely, “ in which 
he crossed my path ; he has robbed me, he has fooled 
me, he brought me hither to be treated like a dog, 
and here I should have died but that I am stronger 
than most of my race, and hard to kill. I could not 
die — ay, I would not,” he added, striking the ground 
with his clenched fist. “ But that fool,” he went on 
after a pause, “ when he woke up to find himself 
there"' (he pointed downwards), “in the dark, alcne, 
with no light, and his box gone, no doubt he thought 
himself buried alive, and out of pure fear and rage, 


HEDRI. 


145 


for want of his arsenic, died. He always was a 
coward ; if he had made up his mind to endure his 
agony for a few hours, daylight would have shown 
him the means of escape, and he would be living 
now.” 

“ I must be off,” broke in Dr. Cripps, “ I don’t know 
how those poor creatures are getting on. And I 
hope I leave you quite happy, sir. Poor Judith, 
poor girl — but the future will make handsome 
amends.” 

“ One moment,” I said, “ I must get an order from 
a magistrate to detain this man as he has important 
evidence to give in Judith’s favour. I won’t watch 
him another night, but he must be put in safe 
custody somewhere.” 

“ O ! Tregonnel will see about that,” said Dr. 
Cripps, “ he is our nearest magistrate, and I shall be 
passing his very door. Come back with me, and I 
will drop you there. Have you breakfasted } ” he 
added, looking keenly at me. 

“No, I was too anxious to see you.” 

“ My housekeeper will give you a mouthful, come 
along. So that fellow has found his appetite } ” he 
added, looking at the Styrian and the empty cup 
and platter beside him, as he went out. 

“Yes, I never thought to see him eat again,” and 
I told the doctor the night’s events. 


146 


HEDRI. 


He listened with the deepest interest, and was 
now sufficiently comfortable in his own person to 
pity me. 

“YouVehad a rough time of it,” he said kindly, 
“ but you’ve reason to be proud of the way you’ve 
undone your mistake. To be sure it all sounds 
wildly improbable, and if Judith is tried again, the 
jury may refuse to believe a word of it — but I take 
it that she is now practically a free woman. To be 
sure she has lost her child, but time will mend that.” 

That night the Styrian slept under another roof 
than mine, and until very late Dr. Cripps and I 
studied together the pamphlet that arrived by the 
evening post. 

The main facts about the practice of “ Hedri ’’ we 
already knew through A — ’s telegram, but many 
interesting details were now added, a few of which I 
here give. 

It appears that the ox-herds in Styria are in the 
habit of administering to the cattle under their 
charge a daily dose of arsenic, for the purpose of 
rendering their hair glossy, and otherwise improving 
their appearance. 

Long ago, one of the ox-herds, wiser than the rest, 
argued that what was good for the oxen was good 
for himself, and having tried it with perfect success, 


HEDRI. 


M7 

and being in possession of robust health, did not 
suffer. He communicated the practice to others, 
and so became the founder of the habit. It is 
acknowledged that the slaves to it live to a green old 
age, and it is supposed by them that they owe their 
longevity to the practice, though this is open to 
serious doubts. 

When Hedri was first brought before the notice of 
the medical profession, it was treated as a gross im- 
position and classed with fasting-girls and other 
frauds, and the doctors boldly declared that the 
Styrian peasants ate chalk, not arsenic, for it was not 
deemed credible that a man could unscathed con- 
sume enough poison to affect a dozen people, and 
sufficient to kill three. 

As early as 1822 Dr. Heisch brought forward 
the subject of arsenic eating, and in 1851 Tschudi 
brought the matter prominently forward, and since 
that time, scientific research has proved Hedri to be 
no fiction, but a very vivid reality. 

No one, however, takes to the habit quite openly. 
It is usually begun in secret and at the increase of 
the moon, with strange and superstitious observances. 

A minute dose is at first taken once a week, 
usually in bread and butter; then twice a week, and 
so on, until, when the individual arrives at a dose 
daily, the dose itself is increased till as much is taken 
as ordinarily would kill two or three people. 


14 $ 


HEDRL 


But their apprenticeship is sharp, and courage is 
needed to go through the initial stages, of the habit. 
Nausea, burning pains in the mouth, throat and 
stomach, last for a considerable time, but no man 
has ever been known to turn back on account of 
them, for the peculiarity of Hedri is this : that 
when a man has once begun to indulge in it, he 
must continue to indulge, for, if he stops, the 
arsenic in his system poisons him, or, as they ex- 
press it, the last dose kills him. He must not 
only continue his indulgence, he must also increase 
the quantity of the drug, for, as sudden cessation 
causes death, the gradual cessation produces such 
terrible heart-gnawing that it may be said that 
no genuine arsenic eater ever ceased to eat arsenic 
while life lasted. 

It is much in their favour that they are all robust 
mountaineers, whose forefathers have eaten arsenic 
from generation to generation, so that each successive 
one has become more arsenic proof than the one before 
him. Then they consume large quantities of milk and 
butter, as well as other food prodigal in fats, when the 
oily matters to a certain extent unite with the arsenic, 
forming an arsenical soap which does not so readily 
enter into the blood, so that the total amount of 
arsenic assimilated is proportionately small. Here- 
dity to a certain extent makes him proof against it. 


HEDRI 


^9 

and his food undoubtedly supplies him with some sort 
of an antidote. 

“ And to think,” said Dr. Cripps, pushing back his 
chair when he had come to the last page, “ that I 
should never have heard a word of it ! That comes, 
sir, of living forty years in a Cornish village, and 
being often too dog-tired to read Bell’s Life, much 
less the British Medical Journal and Lancet. Well 
it’s clear enough now. That poor devil Seth came to 
himself in the dark, there would be no glimmer of 
light from the aperture above, and he would probably 
prowl round and round like a wild beast, never 
dreaming of the rope hanging just above him, for he 
wouldn’t know where he was, and so died, of pure 
cessation of poison, and fury at being trapped. That 
Styrian fellow was of another sort, he wouldn’t die! 
To be sure Seth would not have died if Judith had 
not drugged and put him there — I’m not sure, mind 
you, it won’t be brought in homicide (don’t turn 
pale, man), but she has suffered so much, that perhaps 
mercy will be shown her. 

And now, Mr. Varennes, I think we’ve earned a 
bowl of rat:k-punch, and I only wish my friend A — 
were here to join us.” 


HEDRL 


^50 


CHAPTER XIX. 

** O happy living things ! no tongue 
Their beauty might declare : 

A spring of love gushed from my heart 
And I blessed them unaware.” 

J UDITH’S case was not re-tried, but the new evidence 
was duly laid before the Home Secretary, and shortly 
afterwards supplemented by the written statement of 
the Styrian, who, wearying at last of his confinement, 
and having told all he knew, was suffered to depart. 

So that in due leisurely course, Her Majesty’s most 
gracious pardon was extended to Judith for a crime 
she had never committed, and on the morning she 
was set free a curious and pretty scene was enacted 
outside the gaol gates, at which I gladly assisted. 
For thither came flocking matrons and maids, men 
and youths, little children with chubby hands quite 
full of flowers, and even old gaffers and gammers 
leaning on their sticks, eager to swell the note of 
welcome that was ready to burst forth at sight of the 
woman whom one and all had so cruelly misjudged, 
Not a matron there but had put on her smartest 


HEDRL 


finery, not a man but was redded up as if he were 
bent on courting, half a dozen young girls had been 
decked out in all the available white clothes of the 
community, and carried in their aprons the flowers of 
which they had despoiled their cottage gardens to 
throw at Judith’s feet. 

For the morning of her release was also her wed- 
ding-day, though she little guessed with what hearty 
good-will, and in what numbers, it was to be attended. 

Mingling with the crowd, whose eyes never left the 
yet unopened door through which Judith must pass, 
I heard many things said in the soft Cornish sing-song 
voice that now moved my heart, and now provoked me 
to a smile, but through all I traced the honest, sincere 
nature of a people anxious to make amends for the 
wrong they had done, and full of pity for her upon 
whom they had heaped such heavy stones. 

Among them, blazing with triumph, and with a 
sheep-faced man beside her, who was probably the 
only unwilling spectator present, stood the woman 
who had been Judith’s friend, and who had cham- 
pioned her so warmly while she fed and abused me. 

She spied me out, and pushed her way to me, 
giving my hand a' shake that made it tingle warmly. 

“Awh,” she said, “’ee be’ant such a bad sawl 
arter all, an’ I’ll forgi’e ’ee now, tho’ I took ’ee fo’ a 
Hard when ’ee said I should spake wi’ Judith as a free 


52 


HEDRI. 


woman agen. ’Iss, an’ my man yon do look a fule, a 
reckon a ’ll wear th’ breeks now an’ agen fro’ now.” 

And she nodded her head with a world of mean- 
ing as she fought her way to the first rank before the 
gates. 

Spring — no wayward sprite to tantalise you with 
sips of sweetness, but warm, odourous, all-giving — was 
among those who had come forth to do Judith 
honour, and with her balmy breath she warmed the 
old folks’ blood, and touched the fancies of the youths 
and maidens, so that love and life seemed to pulse 
and throb in that glowing, vigourous crowd standing 
bare-headed beneath the vivid blue and white beauty 
of a mackerel sky, its eyes turned to the prison walls 
before it, its back set to the diamond-strewn breast 
of 


‘‘ The great earth mother, 

Lover and mother of men, the sea ! ” 

I wish that I could describe the lightning thrill 
and stir, as suddenly hushed in one catching breath, 
as the door-way beyond was filled by two tall figures 
bathed in sunshine, but I seem to hear even now the 
roar of welcome that burst from every throat, as the 
lovers advanced trembling, amazed, at the salvoes of 
applause that greeted them. 

The woman wore a white woollen gown, her head 
was uncovered, but Stephen was in his fisherman’s 


HEDRI. 


153 


garb, and looked more like Antinous than ever, if 
one can ever picture the young Greek as perfectly 
happy. 

I thought the vehemence of their welcome at first 
hurt her, for she pressed close to Stephen, but once 
the gates were thrown back, and they were surrounded 
by that impetuous crowd, she smiled and put her 
arms round Nance, who was the very first to reach 
her. 

“ Awh, Judith, woman !” said Nance, kissing her 
hungrily, “ I niver doubted ^ee, ’dearie, an’ it baint my 
fault I’ve not bin anighst ’ee.” 

“ Eh, but I missed ’ee, Nance,” said Judith, and 
first one, then another, must shake her hand, and the 
little ones must give her their flowers, but I saw her 
take up the smallest of them all, and bow her head 
upon its dimpled neck, and I knew that in all the 
glory and sunshine of her day was one sombre cloud. 

When each and all had said their word, and very 
sweet and wholesome many of them were, the 
maidens took matters into their own hands, and 
placing Judith and Stephen in their midst, with 
many droppings of flowers, and liftings of pleasant 
voices in Cornish song, they took their way through 
the gaping town and along the sunny path that 
wound down the cliff to Trevenick. 

Strangers to the place stared at the gay proces- 


*54 


HEDRI. 


f 

sion that had so }ong and happy a following, closed 
in by young and old toddlers of both sexes. The 
sea-wind blew back the girls’ white dresses, and 
sweeter grew their voices till in the distance they 
died away, and many a kindly wish and hopeful 
word followed the pair to the little church, where 
once more they kneeled together with good hope of 
stored-up happiness to come. 

And if, when the rejoicings were at their height, 
they stole away to' where 

; ‘‘ Beside a little grave 
They kissed again with tears — ” 

who shall say that the one touch of sorrow in their 
crowned love did not make it divine ? 

To me their faces seemed as the faces of angels, 
when, stepping down to where I stood, they thanked 
and blessed me, bidding me God-speed whithersoever 
I should go. 


THE END. 




MISS MEREDITH. 


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.44 





MISS MEREDITH. 


CHAPTER I. 

It was about a week after Christmas, and we — my 
mother, my two sisters and myself — were sitting, as 
usual, in the parlour of the little house at Islington. 
Tea was over, and Jenny had possession of the table, 
where she was engaged in making a water-colour 
sketch of still life by the light of the lamp, whose rays 
fell effectively on her bent head with its oreole of 
Titian-coloured hair — the delight of the Slade school 
— and on her round, earnest young face as she lifted 
it from time to time in contemplation of her subject. 

My mother had drawn her chair close to the fire, 
for the night was very cold, and the fitful beams 
played about her worn, serene and gentle face, under 
its widow’s cap, as she bent over the sewing in her 
hands. 

A hard fight with fortune had been my mother’s 
from the day when, a girl of eighteen, she had left a 
comfortable home to marry my father for love. Pov- 
erty and sickness — those two redoubtable dragons — 
had stood ever in the path. Now, even the love 


4 


MISS MEREDITH. 


which had been by her side for so many years, and 
helped to comfort her, had vanished into the un- 
known. But I do not think she was unhappy. The 
crown of a woman’s life was hers ; her children rose 
up and called her blest. 

At her feet sat my eldest sister, Rosalind, entirely 
absorbed in correcting a bundle of proof-sheets, which 
had arrived that morning from Temple Bar. Rosalind 
was the genius of the family, a full-blown London 
B.A., who occasionally supplemented her earnings as 
coach and lecturer by writing for the magazines. She 
had been engaged, moreover, for the last year or two, 
to a clever young journalist, Hubert Andrews by 
name, and the lovers were beginning to look forward 
to a speedy termination to their period of waiting. 

I, Elsie Meredith, who was neither literary nor 
artistic, neither picturesque like Jenny, nor clever like 
Rosalind, whose middle place in the family had always 
struck me as a fit symbol of my own mediocrity — I, 
alone of all these busy people, was sitting idle. Loung- 
ing in the arm-chair which faced my mother’s, I twisted 
and retwisted, rolled and unrolled, read and re-read 
a letter which had arrived for me that morning, and 
whose contents I had been engaged in revolving in 
my mind throughout the day. 

“ Well, Elsie,” said my mother at last, looking up 
with a smile from her work, “ have you come to any 
decision, after all this hard thinking } ” 


MISS MEREDITH. 


5 


“ I suppose it will be yes,” I answered rather dole- 
fully ; Mrs. Grey seems to think it a quite unusual 
opportunity.” And I turned again to the letter which 
contained an offer of an engagement for me as govern- 
ess in the family of the Marchesa Brogi, at Pisa. 

“ I should certainly say ‘ go,’ ” put in Rosalind, 
lifting her dark expressive face from her proofs ; “ if it 
were not for Hubert I should almost feel inclined to go 
myself. You will gain all sorts of experience, receive 
all sorts of new impressions. You are shockingly ill- 
paid at Miss Cumberland’s, and these people offer a 
very fair salary. And if you don’t like it, it is always 
open to you to come back.” 

“ We should all miss you very much, Elsie,” added 
my mother ; “ but if it is for your good, why, there 
is no more to be said.” 

“ Oh, of course we should miss her horribly,” cried 
Rosalind, in her impetuous fashion, gathering to- 
gether the scattered proof-sheets as she spoke; “you 
mustn’t think we want to get rid of you.” And, the 

I 

little thoughtful pucker between her straight brows 
disappeared as she laid her hand with a smile on my 
knee. I pressed the inky, characteristic fingers in my 
own. I am neither literary nor artistic, as I said 
before, but I have a little talent for being fond of 
people. 

“I’m sure I don’t know what I shall do without 


6 


MISS MEREDITH. 


you,” put in Jenny, in her deliberate, serious way, 
making round, grey eyes at me across the lamplight. 
“ It isn’t that you are such a good critic, Elsie, but 
you have a sort of feeling for art which helps one 
more than you have any idea of.” 

I received very meekly this qualified compliment 
without revealing the humiliating fact that my feeling 
for art had probably less to do with the matter than 
my sympathy with the artist; then observed, “It 
seems such waste, for me, of all of us, to be the first to 
go to Italy.” 

“ I would rather go to Paris,” said Jenny, who be- 
longed, at this stage of her career, to a very advanced 
school of aesthetics, and looked upon Raphael as 
rather out of date. “ If only some one would buy my 
picture I would have a year at Julien’s ; it would be 
the making of me.” 

“ For heaven’s sake, Jenny, don’t take yourself so 
seriously,” cried Rosalind, rising and laying down her 
proofs ; “ one day, perhaps, I shall come across an 
art-student with a sense of humour — growing side by 
side with a blue rose. Now, Elsie,” she went on, 
turning to me, as Jenny, with a reproachful air of 
superior virtue, lifted up her paint-brush, and, shutting 
one eye, returned in silence to her measurements — 
“ now, Elsie, let us have further details of this pro- 
posed expedition of yours. How many little Brogi 
shall you be required to teach ” . > 


MISS MEREDITH. 


7 


“ There is only one pupil, and she is eighteen,” I 
answered ; “just three years younger than I.” 

“ And you are to instruct her in all the ’ologies ? ” 

Rosalind had taken a chair at the table, and, her 
head resting on her hand, was interrogating me in her 
quick, eager, half-ironical fashion. 

“No; Mrs. Grey only says English and music. 
She says, too, that they are one of the principrd 
families of Pisa. And they live in a palace,” I added, 
with a certain satisfaction. 

“ It sounds quite too delightful and romantic; if it 
were not for Hubert, as I said before, I should insist 
on going myself. Pisa, the Leaning Tower, Shelley 
— a Marchesa in an old, ancestral palace ! ” And 
Rosalind’s dark eyes shone as she spoke. 

“ Ruskin says that the Leaning Tower is the only 
ugly one in Italy,” said Jenny, not moving her eyes 
from the Japanese pot, cleft orange and coral neck- 
lace which she was painting. 

“ But the cathedral is one of the most beautiful, 
and the place is a mine of historical associations,” 
answered Rosalind, her ardour not in the least damped 
by this piece of information. 

As for me, I sat silent between these two enthusiasts, 
with an abashed consciousness of the limitations of 
my own subjective feminine nature. It was neither 
the beauties or defects of Pisan architecture which at 


8 


M/SS MEREDITH. 


present occupied my mind, nor even the historical 
associations of the town. My thoughts dwelt solely, 
it must be owned, on the probable character of the 
human beings among whom I was to be thrown. 
But then it was I who was going to Pisa, and not my 
sisters. 

“ Does Mrs. Grey know the Marchesa Brogi per- 
sonally ” asked my mother, who also was disposed 
to take the less abstract view of the matter. 

“ Oh, no, it is all arranged through the friend of a 
friend.” 

“ I don’t like the idea of your going so far, alone 
among strangers,” sighed mother ; “ but, on the other 
hand, a change is just what you want.” 

“ What a pity Hubert is not here to-night — that 
horrid premiere at the Lyceum ! We must lay th^ 
plan before him to-morrow,” struck in Rosalind, who, 
hopeless blue stocking as she was, consulted her 
oracle with aU the faith of a woman who barely knows 
how to spell. 

I went over to my mother and took the stool at 
her feet which my sister had just vacated. 

“ It’s going to be ‘Yes,’ mother ; I have felt it all 
along.” 

“ My dear, I won’t be the one to keep you back. 
But need you make up your mind so .soon V' 

“ Mrs. Grey says that the sooner I can leave the 


M/SS MEREDITH. 


9 


better. They would like me to start in a week or ten 
days,” I answered, suppressing as best I could all signs 
of the feeling of desolation that came over me at the 
sound of my own words. 

“You will have to get clothes,” cried Rosalind; 
“ those little mouse-coloured garments of yours will 
never do for ancestral palaces.” 

“ Oh, with some new boots and an ulster — Fm afraid 
I must have an ulster — I shall be quite set up.” 

“You would pay very well for good dressing,” 
observed Jenny, contemplating me with her air of 
impartial criticism. “You have a nice figure, and a 
pretty head, and you know how to walk.” 

“‘Praise from Sir Hubert Stanley,’” replied Rosa- 
lind with some irony. “ My dear Elsie, I have seen 
it in your eyes — they are highly respectable eyes, by- 
the-bye — I have seen it in your eyes from the first 
moment the letter came, that you meant to go. It is 
you quiet women who have all the courage, if you 
will excuse a truism.” 

“ Well, yes, perhaps 1 did feel like going from the 
first.” 

“ And, now that is decided, let me tell you, Elsie, 
that I perfectly hate the idea of losing you.” cried 
Rosalind with sudden abruptness ; then, changing 
her tone, she went on — “ for who knows how or when 
we shall have you back again } You will descend 


lo 


MISS MEREDITH. 


Upon that palazzo resplendent in the new boots aild 
the new ulster : the combined radiance of those two 
adornments will be too much for some Italian Mr. 
Rochester, who, of course, will be lurking about the 
damask-hung corridors with their painted ceilings. 
Jane Eyre will be retained as a fixture, and her native 
land shall know her no more.” 

“ You forget that Jane Eyre would have some voice 
in the matter. And I have always considered Mr. 
Rochester the most unpleasant person that ever a 
woman made herself miserable over,” I answered 
calmly enough, for I was accustomed to these little 
excursions into the realms of fancy on the part of my 
sister. 

“ I think there is a little stone, Elsie, where the 
heart ought to be,” and Rosalind, bending forward, 
poked her finger, with unscientific vagueness, at the 
left side of my waist. 

“ ‘ Men have died and worms have eaten them, 
but not for love,’” I quoted, while there flashed across 
my mind a vision of Rosalind sobbing quietly in the 
night a month before Hubert proposed to her. 

Men ; it doesn’t say anything about women,” 
answered Rosalind, thoughtfully, flying off, as usual, 
at a tangent. 

Is it woman’s mission to die of a broken heart ” 
I could not resist saying, for there had been some 


3//SS MEREDITH. 


1 1 

very confidential passages betv/een us, once upon a 
time. “ ‘The headache is too noble for my sex; you 
think the heartache would sound pleasanter.’ ” 

“ Elsie talking women’s rights ! ” cried Jenny, look- 
ing up astonished from her work. 

“Yes; the effects of a daring and adventurous 
enterprise are beginning to tell upon her in advance.” 

“ We have wandered a long way from Pisa,” I said. 
“ But that is the worst of engaged people ; whatever 
the conversation is, they manage to turn it into 
sentimental channels.” 

“ I sentimental ! ” cried Rosalind, opening wide 
her eyes ; “ I who unite in my own person the charms 
of Cornelia Blimber and Mrs. Zellaby, to be accused 
of sentiment ! ” 

I lay awake that night in my little iron bed long 
after Rosalind was sleeping the sleep of happy labour. 
I was a coward at heart, though I had contrived to 
show a brave front to my little world. 

At the thought of that coming plunge in the un- 
known my spirit grew frozen within me, and I began 
to wish that the fateful letter from Mrs. Grey had 
never been written. 


12 


MISS MEREDITH, 


CHAPTER II. 

About ten days after the conversation recorded in 
the last chapter, I was driving down to Victoria station 
in a four-w'heel cab, wearing the new ulster, the new 
boots, and holding on my knee a brand-new travelling 
bag. It was a colourless London morning, neither 
hot nor cold, but as I looked out with rather dim eyes 
through the dirty windows, I experienced no pleasure 
at the thought of exchanging for Italian skies this 
dear, familiar greyness. At my side sat my mother, 
silent and pale. Now that we two were alone together 
— my busy sisters had been at work some hours ago 
— we had abandoned the rather strained and feverish 
gaiety which had prevailed that morning at break- 
fast. 

“ Now, Elsie, keep warm at night; don’t forget to 
eat plenty.' of Brand’s essence of beef — it’s the brown 
parcel, not the white one — and write directly you 
arrive.” 

Between us we had succeeded in taking my ticket 
and registering the luggage, and now my mother 
stood at the door of the carriage, exchanging with 


Af/^S AfEREDITH, 




me those last farewells which always seem so much 
too long and so much too short. 

This journey of mine it must be owned bore 
to us both the aspect of a great event. We had 
always been poor, most of our friends were poor, and 
we were not familiarised with the easy modern notions 
of travel, which make nothing of a visit to the North 
Pole, or a little trip to China by way of Peru. And 
as the train steamed out at last from the station my 
heart sank suddenly within me, and I could scarcely 
see the black-clothed familiar figure on the platform, 
for the tears which sprang to my eyes and blinded 
me. 

My first new experience was not a pleasant one, 
and as I lay moaning with sickness in a second-class 
cabin, I wondered how I or anyone else could ever 
have complained of anything while we stood on terra 
firma. All past worries and sorrows faded momen- 
tarily into nothingness before this present all-engulfing 
evil. It seemed an age before we reached Calais, 
where, limp, bewildered and miserable, I was jostled 
into a crowded second-class carriage cn route for 
Basle. The train jolted and shook, and I grew more 
and more unhappy, mentally and physically, with 
every minute. My fellow passengers, a sorry, bat- 
tered-looking assortment of women, produced large 
untempting supplies of food from their travelling 


14 


MISS MEREDITH. 


bags, and fell to with good appetite. I myself, after 
some hesitation, sought consolation in the little tin of 
Brand’s essence; after which, squeezed in between 
the window and a perfectly unclassifiable specimen of 
Englishwoman, I fell asleep. 

When I awoke it was broad daylight, and the train 
was gliding slowly into the station at Basle. 

I was stiff, cramped and dishevelled, but yester- 
day’s depression had given place to a new, delicious 
feeling of excitement. The porters hurrying to and 
fro, and shouting in their guttural Swiss-German, the 
people standing on the platform, the unfamiliar adver- 
tisements and announcements posted and painted 
about the station, all appeared to me objects of 
surpassing interest. The glamour of strangeness lay 
over all. A keen exhilarating morning breeze blew 
from the mountains, and as I stepped on to the plat- 
form it seemed as if I trod on air. With a feeling of 
adventure, which I firmly believe Columbus himself 
could never have experienced more keenly, I made 
my way into the crowded refreshment-room, and 
ordered breakfast. I was very hungry, and thought 
that I had never tasted anything better than the 
coffee and rolls, the shavings of white butter, and the 
adulterated honey in its little glass pot. As I sat 
there contentedly I found it difficult to realise that 
less than twenty-four hours separated me from the 


MISS MEREDrJ'H. 


5 


familiar life at Islington. It seemed incredible that 
so short a space of time had sufficed to launch me on 
this strange sea of new experiences, into this dream- 
like, disorganised life, where night was scarcely- 
divided from day, and the common incident of a 
morning meal could induce,, of itself, a dozen new 
sensations. 

The rest of that day was unmixed delight. I 
scarcely moved my eyes from the window as the train 
sped on across the St. Gothard into Italy. What a 
wondrous panorama unrolled itself before me ! • First, 
the mysterious, silent world of mountain.s, all black 
and white, like a photograph, with here and there the 
still, green waters of a mighty lake ; then gentler 
scenes — trees, meadows, villages ; last of all, the 
wide, blue waters of the Italian lakes, with their 
fringe of purple hills, and the little white villas 
clustered round them, and the red, red sunset reflected 
on their surfaces. 

The train was late, and I missed the express at 
Genoa, passing several desolate hours in the great 
deserted station. It was not till eleven o’clock the 
next morning that a tired, dishevelled and decidedly 
dirty young woman found herself standing on the 
platform at Pisa, her travelling rug trailing ignomi- 
niously behind her as she held out her luggage check 
in dumb entreaty to a succession of unresponsive 
porters. 


1 6 MISS MEREDITH. 

The pleasant excitement of yesterday had faded, 
and I was conscious of being exceeding tired and 
rather forlorn. Here was no exhilarating mountain 
air, but a damp breeze, at once chilly and enervating, 
made me shiver where I stood. 

I succeeded at last, in spite of a complete absence 
of Italian, in conveying myself and my luggage in a 
fly, and in directing the driver to the Palazzo Brogi. 
As we jolted along slowly enough, I looked out^ 
expecting every minute to see the Leaning Tower; 
but I saw only tall, grey streets, narrow and often 
without sidewalks, in which a sparse but picturesque 
population was moving to and fro. But I was roused, 
tired as I was, to considerable interest as we crossed 
the bridge and my eye took in the full sweep of the 
river, with the noble curve of palaces along its bank, 
the distant mountains, beautiful in the sunshine, and 
the clear and delicate light which lay over all. 

I had not long, however, to observe these things, 
for in another minute the (jyrosky had stopped before 
a great square house in grey stone, with massive iron 
scrolls guarding the lower windows, and the driver, 
coming to the door, announced that this was the 
Palazzo Brogi. 

My heart sank as I dismounted, and going up the 
steps, pulled timidly at the bell. The great door was 
standing open, and I could see beyond into a gloomy 
and cavernous vista of corridors. 


Af/SS MEREDITH. 


17 


No one answered the. bell, but just as I was about 
to pull for the second time, a gentleman, dressed in a 
grey morning suit a I'anglaise, strolled out inquiringly 
into the passage. He was rather stout, of middle 
height, with black hair parted in the middle, and a 
pale, good-looking face. The fact that no one had 
answered the bell seemed neither to disconcert nor 
surprise him ; he called out a few words in Italian, 
and, advancing towards me, bowed with charming 
courtesy. 

“You are Miss Meredith,” he said, speaking in 
English, slowly, with difficulty, but in the softest 
voice in the world ; “my mother did not expect you 
by the early train.” Here his English seemed to 
break down suddenly, and he looked at me a moment 
with his dark and gentle eyes. There was something 
reassuring in his serious, simple dignity of manner; I 
forgot my fears, forgot also the fact that I was as 
black as a coal, and had lost nearly all my hair-pins, 
and said, composedly, ^ I missed the express from 
Genoa. The train across the St. Gothard was late.” 

At this point there emerged from the shadowy 
region at the back a servant in livery, who very 
deliberately, and without explanation of his tardiness, 
proceeded to help the driver in carrying my box into 
the hall. 

The gentleman bowed himself away^ and in another 


i8 


MISS MEREDITH. 


moment I was following the servant up a vast and 
interminable flight of stone stairs. 

The vaulted roof rose high above us, half lost to 
sight in shadow ; everywhere were glimpses of 
galleries and corridors, and over everything hung 
that indescribable atmosphere of chill stuffiness which 
I have since learned to connect with Italian palaces. 

Anything less homelike, less suggestive of a place 
where ordinary human beings carried on the daily, 
pleasant avocations of life, it would be impossible to 
conceive. A stifling sensation rose in my throat as 
we passed through a folding glass door, across a dim 
corridor, into a large room, where my guide left me 
with a remark which of course I did not understand. 
With a sense of unutterable relief I perceived the 
room to be empty, and I sat down on a yellow 
damask sofa, feeling an ignominious desire to cry. 
The shutters were closed before the great windows, 
but through the gloom I could see that the place was 
furnished very stiffly with yellow damask furniture, 
while enormous and elaborate chests and writing- 
tables filled up the corners. A big chandelier, 
shrouded in yellow muslin, hung from the ceiling, 
which rose to a great height, and was painted in 
fresco. There was no fire, and I looked at the empty 
gilt stove, which had neither bars nor fire-irons, with 
a shiver. 


M/SS MEREDITH, 


19 


It was not long- before an inner door was thrown 
open to admit two ladies, who came towards me with 
greetings in French. The Marchesa Brogi was a 
small, vivacious, dried-up woman of middle age, with 
an evident sense of her own dignity, looking very 
cold and carrying a little mufif in her hands. She 
curtseyed slightly as we shook hands, then motioned 
me to a seat beside her on the sofa. “ This is my 
daughter Bianca,” she said, turning to the girl who 
had followed her into the room. 

I looked anxiously at my pupil, w'hose aspect was 
not altogether reassuring. She was a tall, pale, high- 
shouldered young person, elaborately dressed, with a 
figure so artificially bolstered up that only by a great 
stretch of imagination could one realise that she was 
probably built on average anatomical lines. Her 
hair, dressed on the top of her head and stuck 
through with tortoiseshell combs, produced by its 
unnatural. neatness the same effect of unreality. She 
was^ decidedly plain withal, and her manners struck • 
me as being inferior to those of her mother and 
brother. She took up her seat at some little dis- 
tance from the sofa, and whenever I glanced in her 
direction I saw a pair of sharp eyes fixed on my 
face, with something of the unsparing criticism of a 
hostile child in their gaze. 

I began to be terribly conscious of my disordered 
appearance — I am not one of those people who can 


20 


MISS MEREDITH. 


afford to affect the tempestuous petticoat — and grew 
more and more bewildered in my efforts to follow the 
little Marchesa through the mazes of her fluent but 
curiously accentuated French. 

It was with a feeling of relief that I saw one of the 
inner doors open, and a stout, good-tempered look- 
ing lady, in a loose morning jacket, come smiling into 

the room. She shook hands with me cordially, and 
taking a chair opposite the sofa, began to nod and 
smile in the most reassuring fashion. She spoke no 
English and very little French, but was determined 
that so slight an obstacle should not stand in the way 
of expressing her good-will towards me. 

I began to like this fat, silly lady, who showed her 
gums so unbecomingly when she smiled, and to 
wonder at her position in the household. 

The door opened yet again, and in came my first 
acquaintance, the gentleman in the grey suit. 

I was growing more and more confused with each 
fresh arrival, and dimly wondered how long it would 
be before I fell off the hard yellow sofa from sheer 
weariness. The strange faces surged before me, an 
indistinguishable mass ; the strange voices reached 
me, meaningless and incoherent, through a thick veil. 

She is very tired,” some one said in French ; and 
not long after this I was led across half-a-dozen 
rooms to a great bedroom, where, without taking in 
any details of my surroundings, I undressed, went to 
bed, and fell asleep till the next morning. 


M/SS MEREDITH, 


CHAPTER III. 

When I awoke the sun was streaming in through the 
chinks of the shutters, and a servant was standing at 
my bedside with a cup of coffee and some rolls. But 
I felt no disposition to attack my breakfast, and lay 
still, with a dreamy sensation as my eyes wandered 
round the unfamiliar room. 

I saw a great, dim chamber, with a painted ceiling 
rising sky-high above me ; plaster walls, coarsely 
stencilled in arabesques; a red-tiled floor, strewn 
here and there with squares of carpet ; a few old and 
massive pieces of furniture, and not the vestige of a 
stove. The bed on which I lay was a vast, four-post 
structure, mountains high, with a baldaquin in faded 
crimson damask ; it and its occupant were reflected, 
both rather libellously, in the glass front of a ward- 
robe opposite. 

“I shall never, never feel that it is a normal 
human bedroom,” 1 thought, appalled by the gloomy 
state of my surroundings. Then I drank my coffee, 
and, climbing out of bed, went across to the window, 
and unshuttered it. 


22 


MISS MEREDITH. 


An exclamation of pleasure rose to my lips at the 
sight which greeted me. 

Below flowed the full waters of- the Arno, spanned 
by a massive bridge of shining w'hite marble, and 
reflecting on its waves the bluest of blue heavens. 
A brilliant and delicate sunshine was shed over all, 
bringing out the lights and shades, the differences of 
tint and surface of the tall old houses on the opposite 
bank, and falling on the minute spires of a white 
marble church perched at the very edge of the 
stream. 

The sight of this toy-like structure — surely the 
smallest and daintiest place of worship in the world 
— served to deepen the sense of unreality which was 
hourly gaining hold upon me. 

“ I wonder where the Leaning Tower is,” I thought 
as I hastily drew on my stockings, for standing about 
on the red-tiled floor had made me very cold in spite 
of the sunshine flooding in through the windows; 
“ what would they say at home if they heard I had 
been twenty-four hours in Pisa without so much as 
seeing it in the distance.” 

But I did not allow myself to think of home, and 
devoted my energies to bringing myself up to the 
high standard of neatness which would certainly be 
expected of me. 

I found the ladies sitting together in a large and 


MISS MEREDITH, 


23 


cold apartment, which was more home-like than the 
yellow room of yesterday, inasmuch as its bareness 
was relieved by a variety of modern ornaments, photo- 
graph frames and other trifles, all as hideous as your 
latter-day Italian loves to make them. They greeted 
me with ceremony, making many polite inquiries as 
to my health and comfort, and invited me to sit 
down. The room was very cold, in spite of the 
morning sun, whose light, moreover, was intercepted 
by Venetian blinds. The chilly little Marchesa had 
her hands in her muff, while her daughter warmed 
hers over a scaliino, a small earthen pot filled with 
hot wood ashes, which she held in her lap. 

The amiable lady in the dressing-jacket was evi- 
dently a more warm-blooded creature, for she 
stitched on, undaunted by the cold, at a large and 
elaborate piece of embroidery, taking her part mean- 
while in the ceaseless and rapid flow of chatter. 

It was rather a shock to me to gather that she was 
the wife of the charming son of the house ; to whom, 
moreover, a fresh charm was added when it came 
out that his name was Romeo. I had put her down 
for a woman of middle age, but I learned subse- 
quently that she was only twenty-eight years old, 
and had brought her husband a very handsome 
dowry. The pair were childless after several years 
of marriage and they lived permanently at the 


24 


MJSS MEREf TTH. 


Palazzo Brogi, according to the old patriarchal 
Italian custom, which, like mist old customs, is 
dying out. 

I sat there, stupidly wondering if I should ever be 
able to understand Italian, replying lamely enough 
to the remarks in French which were thrown out to 
me at decent intervals, and encountering every now 
and then with some alarm the suspicious glances of 
the Signorina Bianca. 

Once the kind Marchesina Annunziata — Romeo’s 
wife — drew my attention with simf)le pride to a 
leather chair embroidered with gold, her own handi- 
work, as I managed to make out, 

I smiled and nodded the proper amount of admira- 
tion, and wished secretly that my feet were not so 
cold, for the tiled floor struck chill through the 
carpet. Bianca offered me a scaldino presently, and 
the Marchesa explained that she wished the English 
lessons to begin on the following day. i^fter that I 
sat there in almost unbroken silence till twelve 
o’clock, when the casual man-servant strolled in and 
announced that lunch was ready. 

The dining-room, a large and stony apartment 
with a vaulted roof, was situated on the ground floor, 
and here we found the Marchesino Romeo and the 
old Marchese, to whom I was introduced. The meal 
was slight but excellently cooked ; and the sweet 


M1S6 MEREDITH. 


25 


Tuscan wine I found delicious. Romeo, who sat 
next to me, and attended to my wants with his air 
of gentle and serious courtesy, addressed a few re- 
marks to me in English and then subsided into a 
graceful silence, leaving the conversation entirely in 
the hands of his womenkind. 

After lunch, a drive and round of calls was pro- 
posed by the ladies, who invited me to join them. 
The thought of being shut up in a carriage with these 
three strange women, all speaking their unknown 
tongue, was too much for me, and gathering cour- 
age, the courage of desperation, I announced that, 
unless my services were required, I should prefer to 
go for a walk. The ladies looked at me, and then 
at one another, and the good-natured Annunziata 
burst into a laugh. “ It is an English custom,” she 
explained. • 

“You must not go beyond the city walls, Miss 
Meredith, not even into the Cascine ; it would not 
be safe,” said the Marchesa ; while Bianca looked 
scrutinisingly at my square, low-heeled shoes which 
contrasted sharply with her own. 

It was with a feeling of relief, some twenty minutes 
later, that, peeping from the window of my room, I 
saw them all drive off, elaborately apparelled, in a 
close carriage ; Romeo, bareheaded, speeding them 
from the steps. 


26 


MISS MEREDITH. 


Then I sat down and wrote off an unnaturally 
cheerful letter to the people at home, only pausing 
now and then when the tears rose to my eyes and 
blurred my sight. 

“ I hope I haven’t overdone it” I thought, as I 
addressed the envelope and proceeded to dress. 
“ I’m not sure that there isn’t a slightly inebriated 
tone about the whole thing, and mother is so 
quick at reading between the lines.” 

I passed across the corridor and down the stair 
to the first landing, where I lingered a moment. 
A covered gallery ran along the back of the house, and 
through the tall and dingy windows I could see a 
surging, unequal mass of old red roofs. 

“How Jenny would love it all,” I thought, as I 
turned away with a sigh. 

As I reached the street door, Romeo emerged 
from that mysterious retreat of his on the ground floor, 
where he appeared to pass his time in seme solitary 
pursuit, looked at me, bowed, and withdrew. 

“At last!” I cried inwardly as I sped down the 
steps. At last I could breathe again, at last I was 
out in the sunlight and the wind,’ away from the 
musty chilliness, the lurking shadows of that stifling 
palace. Oh, the joy of freedom and of solitude I 
Was it only hours ? Surely it must be years that 
I had been imprisoned behind those thick old walls 


MISS MEREDITIL 


27 


and iron guarded windows. On, on I went with 
rapid foot in the teeth of the biting wind and the 
glare of the scorching sunlight, scarcely noticing 
my surroundings in the first rapture of recovered 
freedom. But by degrees the strangeness, the beauty 
of what I saw, began to assert themselves. 

I had turned off from the Lung’ Arno, and was 
threading my way among the old and half-deserted 
streets which led to the cathedral. 

What a dead, world-forgotten place, and yet how 
beautiful in its desolation ! Everywhere were signs 
of a present poverty, everywhere of a past magni- 
ficence. 

The men with their sombreros and cloaks worn 
toga fashion, their handsome, melancholy faces and 
stately gait ; the women bareheaded, graceful, draw- 
ing water from the fountain into copper vessels, 
moved before me like figures from an old world 
drama. 

Here and there was a little empty piazza, the 
tall houses abutting on it at different angles, with- 
out sidewalks, the grass growing up between the 
stones. It seemed only waiting for first gentleman 
and second gentleman to come forward and carry on. 
their dialogue while the great “set ” was being pre- 
pared at the back of the stage. 

The old walls, roughly patched with modern brick 


28 


M/SS MEREDITH. 


and mortar, had bits of exquisite carving embedded 
in them like fossils ; and at every street corner the 
house leek sprang from the interstices of a richly 
wrought moulding. A great palace, with a wonder- 
ful fa9ade, had been turned into a wine-shop ; and the 
chestnut-sellers dispensed their wares in little gloomy 
caverns hollowed out beneath the abodes of princes. 
Already the nameless charm of Italy was beginning 
to work on me ; that magic spell from which, let us 
once come under its influence, we can never hope 
to be released. 

A long and straggling street led me at last to the 
Piazza del Duomo, and here for a moment I paused 
breathless, regardless of the icy blast which swept 
across from the sea. 

I thought then, and I think still, that nowhere in 
the world is there anything which, in its own Avay, 
can equal the picture that greeted my astonished 
vision. 

The wide and straggling grass-grown piazza, 
bounded on one side by the city wall, on the other by 
the low wall of the Campo Santo, with the wind 
whistling drearily across it, struck me as the very type 
and symbol of desolation. 

At oneend rose the Leaning Tower, pallid, melan- 
choly, defying the laws oPnaturein a disappointingly 
spiritless fashion. Close against it the magnificent 


M/SS MEREDITH. 


29 


bulk of the cathedral reared itself, a marvel of mellow 
tints, of splendid outline, and richly modelled sur- 
faces. And, divided from this by a strip of rank grass, 
up sprang the little quaint baptistery, with its extra- 
ordinary air of freshness and of fantastic gaiety, look- 
ing as though it had been turned out of a mould the 
day before yesterday. 

Such richness, such forlornness, struck curiously on 
the sense. It was as though, wandering along some 
solitary shore, one had found a heaped treasure 
glittering undisturbed on the open sand. 

I strolled for some time spellbound about the 
cathedral, not caring to multiply impressions by enter- 
ing, shivering a little in the wind which held a recol- 
lection of the sea, and was at the same time cold and 
feverish. By-and-bye, however, I made my way into 
the Campo Santo, lingering fascinated in those strange 
sculptured arcades, with the visions of life and death, 
of hell and heaven, painted on the walls. 

One or two cypresses rose from the little grass-plot 
in the middle, and in the rank grass the jonquils were 
already in flower. I plucked a few of these and 
fastened them in my dress. They had a sweet, pecu- 
liar odour, melancholy, enervating. 

The bright light was beginning to fail as I sped 
back hurriedly through the streets. 

It was Epiphany, and the children were blowing on 


MISS MEREDITH, 


30 

long glass trumpets. Every now and then the harsh 
sound echoed through the stony thoroughfare. It fell 
upon my overwrought senses like a sound of doom. 
The flowers in my bodice smelt of death ; there was 
death, I thought, crying out in every old stone of the 
city. 

The palazzo looked almost like home, and I fled 
up the dim stairs with a greater feeling of relief than 
that with which an hour or two ago I had hastened 
down them. 

After dinner the Marchesa received her friends in 
the yellow drawing-room. 

A wood fire was lighted on the flat, open hearth of 
the stove, and a side table was spread with a few light 
refreshments — a bottle of Marsala wine and a round 
cake covered with bright green sugar being the most 
important items. 

About eight o’clock the visitors began to arrive, 
and in half an hour nine or ten ladies and three or four 
gentlemen were clustered on the damask sofas, talk- 
ing at a great rate, and gesticulating in their graceful, 
eager fashion. Bianca had withdrawn into a corner 
with a pair of contemporaries whose long, stiff waists, 
high-heeled shoes, and elaborately dressed hair, 
resembled her own. The old Marchese sat apart, 
silent and contemplative, as was his wont, and Romeo, 
drawing a chair close to mine, questioned me in his 
precise, restricted English as to my afternoon walk. 


M/SS MEREDITH. 


31 

This parliament of gossip, which, as I afterwards 
discovered, occurred regularly three times a week, 
was prolonged till midnight, out, kind Annunziata 
noticing my tired looks, I was able to make my escape 
by ten o’clock. 

As I climbed into my bed, worn out by the crowded 
experiences of the day, there rose before me suddenly 
a vision of the parlour at home; of mother sewing by 
the fireside; of Jenny and Rosalind at work in the 
lamplight; of Hubert coming in with the evening 
papers and bits of literary gossip. 

“ If they could only see me,” I thought, “ alone in 
this unnatural place, with no one to be fond of me, 
with no one even being aware that I have a Christian 
name.” 

This ..asr touch struck me as so pathetic that the 
tears began to pour down my face. But the tall bed, 
with the faded baldaquin, if oppressive to the imagin- 
ation, was, it must be confessed, exceedingly com- 
fortable, and it was not long before I forgot my 
troubles in sleep. 


I 


32 


MISS MEREDITH. 


CHAPTER IV. 

The English lesson next morning proved rather an 
ordeal. It took place in one of the many sitting- 
rooms, a large room with an open hearth, on which, 
however, no fire was lighted. But with a shawl round 
my shoulders, and a cassetta, or brass box filled with 
live charcoal, for my feet, I managed to keep mode- 
rately warm. 

Bianca rather sullenly drew a small collection of 
reading-books, grammars and exercise-books, all 
bearing marks of careless usage, from a cabinet, and 
placed them on the table. Then drawing a chair 
opposite mine, she fixed her suspicious, curious eyes 
on me, and said in French — 

“ Have you any sisters. Miss Meredith 

“ I have two. But we must speak English, Mar- 
chesina.” 

“ I always spoke French with Miss Clarke,” an- 
swered Bianca. 

Miss Clarke, as I subsequently gathered, was my 
predecessor, who had recently left the palazzo after a 
sojourn of eighteen months, and who, to judge by 




MISS MEREDITH. 


33 


results, must have performed her duties in a. singu- 
larly perfunctory fashion. 

“ Are your sisters married ? ” Bianca condescended 
to say in English, looking critically at my grey merino 
gown, with its banded bodice, and at my hair braided 
simply round my head. 

“ No, but one is engaged.” 

“And have you any brothers ^ ” 

“ No ; not one.” 

“ And I have not one sister, and two brothers, 
Signorina,” cried Bianca, apparently much struck by 
the contrast. “ It is my brother Andrea who is so 
anxious for me to learn and to read books, although 
I am past eighteen. He writes about it to my father, 
and my father always does what Andrea tells him.” 

“ Then you must work hard to please your brother,” 
I said, with my most didactic air, examining thewelb 
thumbed English-Italian grammar as I spoke. 

“ What is the use, when he has been five years in 
America ? Who knows when I may see him ? Ah ! 
molto indepe7idente is Andrea — molto independent e ! ” 
And Bianca shook her too neat head with a sigh of 
mingled pride and reprobation. 

We made a little attack on the grammars and 
reading-books in the course of the morning, but it 
was uphill work, and I sat down to the piano feeling 
thoroughly disheartened. 


34 


MISS MEREDITH. 


But the music lesson was a great improvement on 
the English. Bianca had some taste and considerable 
power of execution, and we rose from the piano better 
friends. A short walk before lunch was prescribed 
by the Marchesa, and soon I was re-threading the 
mazes of the Piso streets, Bianca hobbling slowly and 
discontentedly at my side on her high heels. 

My pupil’s one idea with regard to a walk was 
shops, and now she announced her intention of buy- 
ing some tormo, the sweet paste of honey and almonds 
so dear to Italian palates. As we turned into the 
narrow street, with its old, old houses and stone 
arcades, where, such as they are, the principal shops 
of Pisa are to be found, I could not suppress an 
exclamation of delight at the sight of so much pic- 
turesqueness. 

“ Ah,” said Bianca, not in the least understanding 
my enthusiasm, “you should see the shops at Turin, 
and the great squares, and the glass arcades, and the 
wide streets. I have been there twice. Romeo says 
it is almost as beautiful as Paris.” 

The ladies drove out again after lunch in the closed 
carriage, and again I set out alone to explore the town. 
This time I penetrated into the interior of the cathe- 
dral, spending two happy hours in the dusky richness 
of the vast building ; lost in admiration, now of the soft 
rich colour of marble and jasper and painted glass; 


MISS MEREDITH. 


35 


now of the pictures on walls, roof and altar ; /now of 
the grandeur of line, the mysterious effects of light 
and shadow planned by the cunning brain of a long 
departed master. 

The weather was much milder than on the previous 
day, and half a dozen tourists, with red guide-books, 
were making a round of inspection of the buildings 
on the piazza. 

Two of these I recognised with a thrill to be my 
own compatriots. They were, to the outward eye, 
at least, quite uninteresting ; a bride and bridegroom, 
presumably, of the most commonplace type ; but I 
followed them about the cathedral with a lingering, 
wistful glance which I am sure, had they been con- 
scious of it, would have melted them to pity. Once, 
as I was standing before Andrea del Sarto’s marvel- 
lous St. Catherine, the pair came up behind me. 

“ It’s like your sister Nellie,” said the man. 

“Nonsense! Nellie isn’t half so fat, and she neveu 
did her hair like that in her life. Why, you wouldn’t 
know Nellie without her fringe,” answered the woman 
in a superior way as they moved off to the next 
object of interest mentioned in Baedecker. 

They were Philistines, no doubt ; but I was in no 
mood to be critical, and must confess that the sound 
of their English voices was almost too much for my 
self-control. 


36 


MISS MEREDITH. 


The ladies went out after dinner, and I was left to 
the pains and pleasures of a solitary evening, an almost 
unprecedented experience in my career. 

The next day was Sunday ; the family drove to 
early mass, and an hour or two later I made my way 
to the English church, the sparseness of whose con- 
gregation gave it a rather forlorn aspect. The English 
colony is small, and consists chiefly of invalids attracted 
by the mildness of the climate, who are at the same 
time too poor to seek a more fashionable health resort. 
They did not, as may be imagined, present a very 
cheerful aspect, but the sight of them filled me with 
a passing envy. Mothers and daughters, sisters, 
friends; every one came in groups or pairs, with the 
exception of myself ; I, the most friendless and for- 
lorn of all these exiles. 

The chaplain and his wife called on me after I had 
sent in my name for a sitting, but there was never much 
intimacy between us. 

In the evening of this, my first Sunday away from 
home, the Marchesa again “ received,” and once more 
I sat bewildered amid the flood of unintelligible chat- 
ter, or exchanged occasional remarks with Bianca, who 
appeared to have abandoned her suspicions of me, 
and had taken up her place at my side. 


A//SS MEREDITH. 


37 


CHAPTER V. 

I BOUGHT a dictionary and a grammar, and worked 
hard in my moments of leisure. My daily life, more- 
over, might be described as an almost unbroken Italian 
lesson, and it was not long before I began to under- 
stand what was said around me, and to express my- 
self more or less haltingly in the language of my 
land of exile. A means of communication being thus 
opened up between myself and the Marchesina 
Annunziata, that open-hearted person began to take 
me into her confidence, and to pour out for my 
benefit a dozen little facts and circumstances which I 
might have lived all my life with the voluble, but 
reserved, Marchesa without ever having learnt. 

Of Andrea, the absent son, she spoke often. 

“ Molto independente ! ” she said, shaking her head, 
and using the same expression as her young sister- 
in-law. 

This reprobate, it seemed, flying in the face of 
family .tradition, had announced from the first his 
intention of earning his own living; had studied hard 
and with distinction for a civil engineer, and five years 


38 MISS MEREDITH. 

ago, refusing all offers of help, had accepted a jDost 
in America. 

As for Romeo, the elder brother, he, also, said his 
wife, was very clever ; had passed his examinations 
as a barrister. “ But, of course,” she added, wdth 
naive pride, “ he would never think of practising.” 

Romeo, indeed, to do him justice, was troubled by 
no disturbing spirit of radicalism, and carried on the 
ancestral pursuit of doing nothing with a grace and a 
persistence which one could not but admire. 

His mother possessed a fine natural aptitude for 
the same branch of industry ; but the old Marchese, 
whom, though he spoke but little and was seldom 
seen, I soon perceived to have a character of his own, 
passed his days in reading and writing in some obscure 
retreat on the ground floor. 

Bianca, after suspending her judgment for some 
days, had apparently given a verdict in my favour, 
for she now followed me about like a dog, a line of 
conduct which, though flattering, had certainly its 
drawbacks. The English lessons were always a trial, 
but they grew better as time went on, and the music 
lessons were far mo^e satisfactory. 

As for me, I began to grow fond of my pupil ; she 
was such a crude, instinctive creature, so curiously 
undeveloped for her time of life, that one could not 
but take her under one’s wing and forgive her her 
failings as one forgives a little child. 


MISS MEREDITH. 


39 


I had now been a month in Pisa, and the first 
sense of desolation and of strangeness had worn off. 
There were moments, even now, when the longing 
for home grew so desperate that I was on the point 
of rushing off to England by the next train. But I 
was growing accustomed to my surroundings; the 
sense of being imprisoned in an enchanted palace 
had vanished, and had been followed by a more 
prosaic, but more comfortable, adaptation to environ- 
ment. 

My life moved from day to day in a groove, and I 
ceased to question the order of things. In the 
morning were the lessons and the walk with Bianca; 
the afternoons were looked upon as my own, and 
these I generally passed in reading, writing letters, 
and in walking about the city, whose every stone I 
was getting to know by heart. 

Often leaning on the bridge and looking across at 
the palaces curving along the river, I peopled with a 
visionary company the lofty rooms beyond the lofty 
windows. 

Here Shelley came with his wife and the Williams’s, 
and here it was that they made acquaintance with 
Emilia Viviani, the heroine of “ Epipsychidion.” 
Byron had a palace all to himself, whence he rode 
out with Trelawney, to the delight of the population. 
Leigh Hunt lingered here in his many wanderings, 


MISS MEREDITH. 


40 

V 

and Landor led a hermit life in some hidden corner 
of the old town. Claire Clairmont, that unfortunate 
mortal, who wherever she came brought calamity, 
vibrated discontentedly between here and Florence, 
and it seemed that sometimes I saw her, a little, 
unhappy, self-conscious ghost, looking from the upper 
windows of Shelley’s palace. 

And here, too, after the storm and the shipwreck 
in which their lives’ happiness had gone down, came 
those two forlorn women, Mary Shelley and Jane 
Williams. Upon the picture of such sorrow I could 
not trust myself to gaze ; only now and then I heard 
their shadowy weeping in some dim, great chamber 
of a half-deserted house. 

At other times, I returned to my first friend, the 
great piazza, whose marvels it seemed impossible to 
exhaust, and for which I grew to entertain a curiously 
personal affection. 

But as the spring came on, and the mild, enervating 
breezes ousted more and more their colder comrades, 
I began to long with all my soul and body for the 
country. The brown hills, so near and yet so far, 
inspired me with a fervour of longing. I had pro- 
mised never to go beyond the city walls ; even the 
great park, or Cascine, where already the trees were 
bourgeoning, was forbidden ground, though some- 
times, indeed, I drove out there with the ladies. 


MISS MEREDITH, 


41 


The cool and distant peaks of the Apennines drew 
my heart towards them with an ever-growing magne- 
tism. The cypresses and ilexes springing up beyond 
the high white walls of a garden, the scent of spring 
flowers borne across to me in passing, filled me with 
a longing and a melancholy which were new to me. 

As a matter of fact, the enervating climate, the 
restricted life and the solitude — for solitude, when all 
were said, it was — were beginning to tell upon my 
health. I was not unhappy, but I grew thin and 
pale, and was developing a hitherto unknown mood 
of dreamy introspection. 

In June, I gathered, the whole Brogi household 
would adjourn to the family villa near the baths of 
Lucca. It was taken for granted that I was to 
accompany them, and, indeed, I had determined on 
making out my full year, should my services be 

required for so long. 

* 

After that, no doubt, a husband would be found 
for Bianca, and I could return to England with a clear 
conscience and quite a nice little amount of savings. 
Mother should have a deep arm chair, and Rosalind 
a really handsome wedding present ; and with my new 
acquisition of Italian I hoped to be able to command 
a higher price in the educational market. 

The evenings were generally passed in chatter, in 
which I soon learnt to take my part ; and I began to 


42 


MISS MEREDITH. 


be included in the invitations to the houses of the 
various ladies who received,” like the Marchesa, on 
certain evenings of the week. 

No subject of gossip was too trivial for discussion ; 
and I could not but admire the way in which the 
tiniest incident was taken up, turned inside out, 
battledored this way and that, and finally worn thread- 
bare before it was allowed to drop, by these highly 
skilled talkers. Talk indeed was the business of their 
lives, the staple fare of existence. 

Every one treated me with perfect courtesy, but 
also, it must be owned, with perfect coldness. 

Bianca, as I said before, developed a sort of fond- 
ness for me; and Annunziata included me in her 
general benevolence — Annunziata, good soul, who 
was always laughing, when she was not deluged 
in tears. I fancy the charming Romeo had his 
drawbacks as a husband. 

The Marchesa, with her glib talk, her stately, 
courtesy, was in truth the chilliest and the most 
reserved of mortals. Of Romeo I saw but little. 
With the old Marchese, alone, I was conscious of 
a silent sympathy. 


MJSS MEREDITH. 


43 


CHAPTER VI. 

One morning after the breakfast I found the whole 
family assembled in the yellow drawing-room in a 
state of unusual excitement. Even the bloodless 
little Marchesa had a red spot on either shrivelled 
cheek, and her handsome old husband had thrown off 
for once his mask of impenetrable and impassive 
dignity in favour of an air of distinct and lively 
pleasure. 

Bianca was chattering, Romeo was smiling, and 
Annunziata, of course, was smiling too. Beckoning 
me confidentially towards her, and showing her 
gums even more freely than usual, she said : “ There 
is great news. The Marchesino Andrea is coming 
home. We have had a letter this morning, and we 
are to expect him within a fortnight.” 

I received with genuine interest this piece of infor- 
mation. From the first I had decided that the rebel 
was probably the most interesting member of his 
family, and had even gone so far as to “ derive ” him 
from, his father, in accordance with the latter-day 
scientific fashion which has infected the most unscien- 
tific among us. 


44 


iMISS MEREDITH, 


Bianca was quite unmanageable that morning, and 
I had finally to abandon all attempts at discipline 
and let her chat away, in English, to her heart’s 
content. 

‘‘ I cried all day when Andrea went away,” she 
rattled on “I was quite a little thing, and I did 
nothing but cry. Even mamma cried too. When he 
was home she was often very, very angry with 
Andrea. Every one was always being angry with 
him,”'she added presently, but every one liked him 
best. There was often loud talking with papa and 
Romeo. I used to peep from the door of my nursery 
and see Andrea stride past with a white face and a 
great frown.” She knitted her own pale brows 
together in illustration of her own words, and looked 
so ridiculous that I could -not help laughing. 

I judged it best, moreover, to cut short these con- 
fidences, and we adjourned, with some reluctance on 
her part, to the piano. 

Lunch was a very cheerful meal that day, and 
afterwards Bianca thrust her arm in mine and dragged 
me gaily upstairs to the sitting-room. 

“ Only think,” she said, “ mamma is writing to 
Costanza Marchetti, at Florence, to ask her to stay 
with us the week after next.” 

“ Is the Signorina a great friend of yours } ” 

Bianca looked exceedingly sly. ‘‘ Oh, yes, she is a 


MISS MEREDITH. 


45 


great friend of mine. I stayed with her once at Flo- 
rence. They have a beautiful, beautiful house on the 
Lung’ Arno, and Costanza has more dresses than she 
can wear.” 

She spoke with such an air of naive and important 
self-consciousness that I could scarcely refrain from 
smiling. 

It was impossible not to see through her meaning. 
The beloved truant was to be permanently trapped ; 
the trap to be baited with a rich, perhaps a beautiful, 
bride. The situation was truly interesting ; I foresaw 
the playing out of a little comedy under my very 
eyes. 

Life quickened perceptibly in the palazzo after the 
receipt of the letter from America. Plans for picnics, 
balls and other gaieties were freely discussed. There 
was a constant dragging about of heavy furniture 
along the corridors, from which I gathered that rooms 
were being suitably prepared both for Andrea and 
his possible bride. 

At the gossip parliaments, nothing else was talked 
of but the coming event; the misdemeanours of 
servants, the rudeness of tradesmen, and the latest 
Pisan scandal being relegated for the time being to 
complete obscurity. 

In about ten days Costanza Marchetti appeared on 
the scene. 


46 


M/SS MEREDITH. 


We were sitting in the yellow drawing-room after 
lunch when the carriage drove up, followed by a fly 
heavily laden with luggage. Bianca had rushed to 
the window at the sound of wheels, and had hastily 
described the cavalcade. 

A few minutes later in came Romeo with a young, 
or youngish, lady, dressed in the height of fashion, 
on his arm. 

She advanced towards the Marchesa with a sort of 
sliding curtsey, and shook hands from the elbow in a 
manner worthy of Bond-street. But the meeting 
between her and Bianca was even more striking. 

Retreating a little, to allow free play for their 
operations, the young ladies tilted forward on their 
high heels, precipitating themselves into one another’s 
arms, where they kissed one another violently on 
either cheek. Retreating again, they returned once 
more to the charge, and the performance was gone 
through for a second time. 

Then they sat down close together on the sofa, 
stroking one another’s hands. 

“ Costanza powders so thickly with violet powder, 
it makes me quite ill,” Bianca confided to me later in 
the day ; “ and she thinks there is nobody like herself 
in all the world.” 

When the Contessina, for that I discovered was 
her style and title, had detached her fashionable bird. 


MISS MEREDITH. 


47 


cage veil from the brim of her large hat, I fell to 
observing her with some curiosity from my modest 
corner. She was no longer in her first youth — about 
twenty-eight — I should say, but she was distinctly 
handsome, in a rather hard-featured fashion. . 

When she was introduced to me, she bowed very 
stiffly, and said, “ How do you do. Miss } ” in the 
funniest English I had ever heard. 

“ It is so good of you to come to us,” said the 
Marchesa, with her usual stateliness ; “ to leave your 
gay Florence before the end of the Carnival for our 
quiet Pisa. We cannot promise you many parties 
and balls. Costanza.” 

Perhaps Costanza had seen too many balls in her 
time — had discovered them, perhaps (who knows ^ ), 
to be merely dust and ashes. 

At any rate, she eagerly and gushingly disclaimed 
her hostess' insinuation, and there was voluble 
exchange of compliments between the ladies. 

“ Will you give Bianca a holiday for this week. Miss 
Meredith ? ” said the Marchesa, presently. 

“ Certainly, if you will allow it,” I answered, saying 
what I knew I was intended to say. 

Costanza looked across at me coldly, taking in the 
modest details of my costume. 

And when does the Marchesino arrive ? ” she 
asked, turning to his mother. 


48 


MISS MEREDITH, 


♦ “Not till late on Thursday night.’* 

Bianca counted upon her fingers. 

“ Three whole days and a half,” she cried. 

“ On Friday,” said the Marchesa, “ we have arranged 
a little dance. It is so near the end of Carnival we 
could not put it off till long after his arrival.” 

“ Ah, dearest Marchesa,” cried Costanza, clasping 
her hands in a rather mechanical rapture,. “ it will be 
too delightful ! Do we dance in the ball-room below, 
or in here } ” 

“ In the ball-room,” said the Marchesa, while An- 
nunziata nodded across at me, saying: — 

“ Do you dance. Miss Meredith ^ ” 

“Yes; I am very fond of it,” I answered; but it 
must be owned that I looked forward with but scant 
interest to the festivity. My insular mind was unable 
to rise to the idea of Italian partners. 

Costanza raised her eyeglass, with its long tortoise- 
shell handle, to her heavy-lidded eyes, and surveyed 
me scrutinisingly. It had been evident from the first 
that she had but a poor opinion of me. 

“ I hope you will join us on Friday, Miss Mere- 
dith,” said the Marchesa, with much ceremony. 

I could not help feeling snubbed. I had taken it 
for granted that I was to appear; this formal invita- 
tion was inexpressibly chilling. 

I did not enjoy my holiday of the next few days. 


MISS MEREDITH. 


49 


I had always been exceedingly grateful for my few 
hours of daily solitude, and these were mine no more. 
The fact that the ladies of the household never seemed 
to need either solitude or silence had impressed me 
from the first as a curious phenomenon. Now, for 
the time being, I was dragged into the current of 
their lives, and throughout the day was forced to 
share in the ceaseless chatter, without which, it 
seemed, a guest could not be entertained, a ball given, 
or even a son received into the bosom of his family. 

Here, there, and everywhere was the unfortunate 
Miss Meredith — at everybody’s beck and call, “ up- 
stairs, downstairs and in my lady’s chamber.” 

‘‘ It is fortunate, that it is only me,” I reflected. 
“ I don’t know what Jenny or Rosalind would do. 
They would just pack up and go.” For, at home, the 
liberty/ of the individual had always been greatly 
respected, which was, perhaps, the reason why we 
managed to live together in such complete harmony. 

As for Bianca and her friend, they clattered about 
all day long together on their high heels, their arms 
intertwined, exchanging confidences, comparing pos- 
sessions, and eating torino till their teeth ached. In 
the intervals of this absorption in friendship my 
pupil would come up to me, throw her arms round 
me, and pour out a flood of the frankest criticisms on 
the fair Costanza. To these I refused to listen. 


50 


MISS MEREDITH. 


How can I tell, Bianca, that you do not rush off 
to the Contessina and complain of me to her ? ” 

“ Dearest little Signorina, there could be nothing 
to complain of.” 

“ Of course,” I said, “ we know that. I am perfect. 
But, seriously, Bianca, I do not understand this kiss- 
ing and hugging of a person one moment, and saying 
evil things of her the next.” 

Bianca was getting on for nineteen, but it was 
necessary to treat her like a child. She hung her 
head, and took the rebuke very meekly. 

‘‘ But, Signorina, say what you will. Costanza does 
put wadding in her stays, because she is so thin, and 
then pretends to have a fine figure.- And she has a 

bad temper, as every one knows. ” 

“ Bianca, you are incorrigible ! ” I put my hand 
across her mouth, and ran down the corridor to my 


own room. 


MISS MEREDITH, 


51 


CHAPTER VIL 

The covered gallery which ran along the back of the 
house was flooded in the afternoon with sunshine. 
Here, as the day declined, I loved to pace, basking 
in the warmth and rejoicing in the brightness, for 
mild and clear as the day might be out of doors, 
within the thick-walled palace it was always mirk 
and chill. 

The long, high wall of the gallery was covered 
with pictures — chiefly paintings of dead and gone 
Brogi — most of them worthless, taken singly ; taken 
collectively, interesting as a study of the varieties of 
family types. 

Here was Bianca, to the life, painted two centuries 
ago ; the old Marchese looked out from a dingy can- 
vas 300 years old at least, and a curious mixture of 
Romeo and his sister disported itself in powder amid 
a florid eighteenth century family group. Conspi- 
cuous among so much indifferent workmanship hung 
a genuine Bronzino of considerable beauty, represent- 
ing a young man whose charming aspect was scarcely 
marred by his stiff and elaborate fifteenth century 
costume. The dark eyes of this picture had a way 


52 


M/SS MEREDITH. 


of following one up and down the gallery in a rather 
disconcerting manner; already I had woven a series 
of little legends about him, and had decided that he 
left his frame at night, like the creatures in “ Ruddy- 
gore,” to roam the house as a ghost where once he 
had lived as a man. 

Opposite the pictures, on which they shed their 
light, was a row of windows, set close together deep 
in the thick wall, and rising almost to the ceiling. 
They were not made to open, but through their 
numerous and dingy panes I could see across the 
roofs of the town to the h^ls, or down below to where 
a neglected bit of territory, enclosed between high 
walls, did duty as a garden. 

In one corner of this latter stood a great ilex tree, 
its massive grey trunk old and gnarled, its blue- 
green foliage casting a wide shadow. Two or three 
cypresses, with their bare broom-like stems, sprang 
from the overgrown turf, which at this season of the 
year was beginning to be yellow with daffodils, and 
a thick growth of laurel bushes ran along under the 
walls. An empty marble basin, approached by 
broken pavement, marked the site of a forgotten 
fountain, the stone crop running riot about its 
borders ; the house-leek thrusting itself every now 
and then through the interstices of shattered stone. 
Forlorn, uncared for as was this square of ground , 


M/SS MEREDITH, 


53 


it had for me a mysterious attraction ; it seemed to 
me that there clung to it through all change of times 
and weathers, something of the beauty in desolation 
which makes the charm of Italy. 

It was about four o’clock on Thursday afternoon, 
and I was wandering up and down the gallery in the 
sunshine. I was alone for the first time during the last 
three days, and was making the best of this brief 
respite from the gregarious life to which I saw myself 
doomed for some time to come. The ladies were out 
driving, paying calls and making a few last purchases 
for the coming festivities. In the evening Andrea 
was expected, and an atmosphere of excitement per- 
vaded the whole household. 

“ They are really fond of him, it seems,” I mused ; 
“ these people who, as far as I can make out, are so 
cold.” 

Then I leaned my forehead disconsolately against 
the window, and had a little burst of sadness all by 
myself. 

The constant strain of the last few days had tired 
me. I longed intensely for peace, for rest, for affec- 
tion, for the sweet and simple kindliness of home. 
I had even lost my interest in the coming event 
which seemed to accentuate my own forlornness. 
What were other people’s brothers to me ? Let 
mother or one of the girls come out to me, and I 


54 


MISS MEREDITH, 


would not be behind hand in rejoicing. “No one 
wants me, no one cares for me, and I don’t care for 
any one either,” I said to myself gloomily, brushing 
away a stray tear with the back of my hand. Then 
I moved from the window and my contemplation of 
the ilex tree, and began slowly pacing down the 
gallery, which was getting fuller every minute of 
the thick golden sunlight. 

But suddenly my heart seemed to stop beating, 
my blood froze, loud pulses fell to throbbing in my 
ears. I remained rooted to the spot with horror, 
while my eyes fixed themselves on a figure, which, 
as yet on the further side of a shaft of moted sun- 
light, was slowly advancing towards me from the 
distant end of the gallery. 

“ It is the Bronzino come to life ! ” whispered a 
voice in some back recess of my consciousness. The 
next moment I was laughing at my own fears, and 
was contemplating with interest and astonishment 
the very flesh-and-blood presentment of a modern 
gentleman which stood bowing before me. 

“ I fear I have startled you,” said a decidedly 
human voice, speaking in English, with a peculiar 
accent, while the speaker looked straight at me with 
a pair of dark eyes that were certainly like those of 
the Bronzino. 

“ Oh, no ; it was my own fault for being so 


MISS MEREDITH. 


55 


stupid,” I answered rather breathlessly, shaken out 
of my self-possession. 

“ I am Andrea Brogi,” he said, with a little bow ; 
“and I believe I have the pleasure of addressing 
Miss Clarke > ” 

“ I am Miss Meredith, your sister’s governess,” I 
answered, feeling perhaps a little hurt that the sub- 
stitution of one English teacher for another had not 
been thought a matter of sufficient importance for 
mention in the frequent letters which the family had 
been in the habit of sending to America. Andrea, 
with great simplicity, went on to explain his presence 
in the gallery. 

“ I am some hours before my time, you see. I had 
miscalculated the trains between this and Livorno. 
Now, don’t you think this a nice reception. Miss 
Meredith ” he went on, with a smile and a sudden 
change of tone.- “ No one to meet me at the depot, no 
one to meet me at home ! Father and brother at the 
club, mother and sister amusing themselves in the 
town.” 

His remark scarcely seemed to admit of a reply; 
it was not my place to assure him of his welcome, and 
I got out of the situation with a smile. 

He looked at me again, this time more attentively. 
“ But I fear you were really frightened just now. You 
are pale still and trembling. Did you think I was a 
ghost ? ” 


56 


MISS MEREDITH. 


“I thought— I thought you were the Bronzino 
come down from its frame,” I answered, astonished 
at my own daring. The complete absence of self- 
consciousness in my companion, the delight, more- 
over, of being addressed in fluent English, gave me 
courage. 

As I spoke I moved over half unconsciously to the 
picture in question. Andrea, smiling gently, followed 
me, and planting himself before the canvas contem- 
plated it with a genuine and naive interest that was 
irresistible. 

I stood by, uncertain whether to go or stay, fur- 
tively regarding him. 

“ Was there ever such a creature,” I thought ; “ with 
your handsome serious face, your gentle dignified 
air for all the world like Romeo’s ; with your sweet 
Italian voice and your ridiculous American accent — 
and the general suggestion about you of an old bottle 
with new wine poured in — only in this case by no 
means to the detriment of the bottle ? ” 

At this point the unconscious object of my medi- 
tation broke in upon it. 

“ Why, yes,” said Andrea calmly, “ I had never 
noticed it before, but I really am uncommonly like 
the fellow.” 

As he spoke, he fixed his eyes, frank as a child’s, 
upon my face. 


iMISS MEREDITH, 


57 


As for me, I could not forbear smiling ; whereupon 
Andrea, struck with the humour of the thing, broke 
into a radiant and responsive smile. I thought I had 
never seen any one so funny or so charming. 

At this point a bell rang through the house. “ That 
must be my mother,” he said, growing suddenly alert. 
“ Miss Meredith, you will excuse me.” 

I lingered in the gallery after he had left, but my 
forlorn and pensive mood of ten minutes ago had 
vanished. 

Rather wistfully, but with a certain excitement, I 
listened to the confused sound of voices which 
echoed up from below. 

Then I heard the whole party pass upstairs behind 
me, the heels of the ladies clattering in a somewhat 
frenzied manner on the stones. 

Annunziata was laughing and crying, the Mar- 
chesa was talking earnestly, the young ladies scattered 
ejaculations as they went. Every now and then I 
caught the clear tones of Andrea’s voice. 

At dinner that night there was high festival. Every 
one talked incessantly, even Romeo and his father. 
We had a turkey stuffed with chestnuts, and the 
Marchese brought forth his choicest wines. At the 
beginning of the meal I had been introduced to the 
new arrival, and, for no earthly reason, neither had 
made mention of the less formal fashion in which we 
had become acquainted. Some friends dropped in 


58 


M/SS MEREDITH, 


after dinner, and Andrea was again the hero of the 
hour — a rather trying position, which he bore with 
astonishing grace. I sat sewing in a distant corner 
of the room, content with my spectator’s place, grow- 
ing more and more interested in the spectacle. 

“ That Costanza ! ” I thought, rather crossly, as I 
observed the handsome Contessina smiling archly at 
Andrea above her fan. “ I wonder how long the 
little comedy will be a-playing As for the end, 
that, I suppose, is a foregone conclusion.” Then I 
bent my head over my crewel-work again. I was 
beginning to feel annoyed with Andrea for having 
passed over our first meeting in silence ; I was begin- 
ning also to wish I had furred slippers like Bianca’s, 
as a protection against the cold floor. 

“ Miss Meredith,” said a voice at my elbow, “ you 
are cold ; your teeth will soon begin to chatter in 
your head.” 

Then, before I knew what was happening, I was 
led from my corner, and installed close to the kind- 
ling logs. And it was Andrea, the hero of the day, 
who had done this thing; but had done it so quietly, 
so much as a matter of course, as scarcely to attract 
attention, though the Marchesa’s eye fell on me coldly 
as I took up my new position. 

“ It really does make the place more alive,” 1 
reflected, as I laid my head on my pillow that 
night. “ I am quite glad the Marchesino is here. 
And I wonder what he thinks of Costanza ? ” 


AfISS MEREDITH, 


59 


CHAPTER VIII. 

The day after the dance was exquisitely bright and 
warm — we seemed to have leapt at a bound into the 
very heart of spring — and when I came out of my room 
I was greeted with the news that Andrea and the 
ladies had gone to drive in the Cascine. Annunziata 
was my informant. She had stayed at home, and, 
freed from the rigid eye of her mother-in-law, was 
sitting very much at her ease, ready to gossip with 
the first comer. 

The Marchesina could rise to an occasion as w.ell 
as any one else ; could, when duty called, confine her 
stout form in the stiffest of stays, and build up her 
hair into the neatest of bandolined pyramids. But I 
think she was never so happy as when, the bow un- 
bent, she could expand into a loose morning- 
jacket and twist up her hair into a vague, unbecoming 
knot behind. 

“ Dear little Signorina,” she cried, beckoning me 
to a seat with her embroidery scissors, “ have you 
heard the good news ? Andrea returns no more to 
America.” 

“He has arranged matters with Costanza pretty 


6o 


M/SS MEREDITH. 


quickly,” was my reflection ; and at the thought of 
that easy capitulation he fell distinctly in my esteem. 

“ He has accepted a post in England,” went on 
Annunziata. “We shall see him every year, if not 
oftener. Every one is overjoyed. It is a step in the 
right direction. Who knows but one day he may 
settle in Italy } ” And she smiled meaningly, nod- 
ding her head as she spoke. 

The ladies came back at lunch-time without their 
cavalier, and assembled in the sitting-room, display- 
ing every One of them unmistakable signs of what is 
sometimes called “ hot coppers.” 

“ Costanza is so cross,” said Bianca, drawing me 
aside, in her childish fashion; “she talks of going 
back at once to Florence, and I don’t know who 
would be sorry if she did.” 

“ Oh, for shame, Bianca, she is your guest,” I said, 
really shocked. 

I had been greeted coldly on my entrance, a fact 
which had dashed my own cheerful mood, and had set 
me seriously considering plans of departure. “ If they 
are going to dislike me, there’s an end of the matter,” 
I thought ; but I hated the idea of retiring beaten from 
the field. 

I did not succeed in making my escape for a single 
hour throughout the day. Every one wanted Miss 
Meredith’s services ; now she must hold a skein of 


MISS MEREDITH. 


6i 


wool, now accompany Costanza’s song on the piano, 
now shout her uncertain Italian down the trumpet of 
a deaf old visitor. I was quite worn out by dinner- 
time, and afterwards the whole party drove off to a 
reception, leaving me behind. 

“ Does not the Signorina accompany us ? ” said 
Andrea to his mother, as they stood awaiting the 
carriage. 

“ Miss Meredith is tired and goes to bed,” answered 
the Marchesa in her dry, impenetrable way. I 
had not been invited, but I made no remark. Andrea 
opened his eyes wide, and came over deliberately to 
the sofa where I sat. 

There was such a determined look about the lines 
of his mouth, about his whole presence, that I found 
myself unconsciously thinking: “You are a very, 
vefy obstinate person, Marchesino, and I for one 
should be sorry to defy you. You looked just like that 
five years ago, when they were trying to tie you to the 
ancestral apron-strings, and I don’t know that Cos- 
tanza is to be envied, when all is said.” 

“ Miss Meredith,” said his lowered voice in my car, 
“ this is the first opportunity you have given me to- 
day of telling you what I think of your conduct. I 
do not wonder that you are afraid of me.” 

“ Signor Marchesino ? ” 

“ To make engagements and to break them is not 


62 


MISS MEREDITH. 


thought good behaviour either in Italy or in America. 
Perhaps in England it is different.” ‘ 

I looked up, and meeting his eyes forgot everything 
else in the world. Forgot the Marchesa hovering near, 
only prevented by a certain awe of her son from 
swooping down on us ; forgot Costanza champing the 
bit, as it were, in the doorway ; forgot the cold, un- 
friendly glances which had made life dark for me 
throughout the day. 

His gravity was too much for my own, and I 
smiled. 

“ You suffer from too keen a sense of humour. Miss 
Meredith,” he said, and I scarcely knew whether to 
take him serfously or not. I only knew that my 
heart was beating, that my pulses were throbbing as 
they had never done before. 

“The carriage is at the door, Andrea,” cried 
Bianca, bouncing up to us, and looking inquisitive 
and excited. 

He rose at once, holding out his hand. 

“ Good-night, Miss Meredith,” he said aloud, “ I 
am sorry that you do not accompany us.” 

Costanza flounced across the passage noisily ; the 
Marchesa looked me full in the face, then turned away 
in silence ; and even Annunziata was grave. I felt 
suddenly that I had been brought up before a court 
of justice, tried, and found guilty of some heinous but 
unknown offence. 


MISS MEREDITH. 


63 


Light still lingered in the gallery, and when the 
cari^iage had rolled off I sought shelter there, pacing to 
and fro with rapid, unequal tread. What had happened 
to me ? What curious change had wrought itself not 
only in myself, but in my surroundings, during these 
last two days ? Was it only two days since Andrea 
had come towards me down this very gallery ? Un- 
consciously the thought shaped itself, and then I grew 
crimson in the solitude. What had Andrea to do with 
the altered state of things ? How could his home- 
coming affect the little governess, the humblest mem- 
ber of that stately household ? 

There in the glow of the fading sunlight hung the 
Bronzino, its eyes — so like some other eyes — gazing 
steadily at me from the canvas. “ Beautiful eyes,” I 
thought ; “ honest eyes, good eyes ! There was never 
anything very bad in that person’s life. I think he 
was good and happy, and that every one was fond of 
him.” 

And then again I blushed, and turned away sud- 
denly. To blush at a picture ! 

Down in the deserted garden the spring was carry- 
ing on her work, in her ov/n rapid, noiseless fashion. 
No doubt it was the spring also that was stirring in 
my heart ; that was causing all sorts of new, unex- 
pected growths of thought and feeling to sprout into 
sudden life ; that was changing the habitual serenity 


64 


MISS MEREDITH. 


of my mood into something of the fitfulness of an 
April day. 

Alternately happy and miserable, I continued to 
pace the gallery till the last remnant of sunlight had 
died away, and the brilliant Italian moonlight came 
streaming in through the windows. 

Then my courage faded all at once. The stony 
place struck chill, my own footsteps echoed unnatu- 
rally loud ; the eyes of the Bronzino starihg through 
the silver radiance filled me with unspeakable terror. 
With a beating heart I gathered up my skirts and 
fled up the silent stairs, along the corridor, to my 


room. 


MISS MEREDITH. 


65 


CHAPTER IX. 

Leaning out from the window of my room the next 
morning I saw Andrea and his father walking slowly 
along the Lung’ Arno in the sunlight. 

In the filial relation, Andrea, I had before observed, 
particularly shone. His charming manner was never 
so charming as when he was addressing his father ; 
and the presence of his younger son appeared to have 
a vitalising, rejuvenating effect on the old Marchese. 

And now, as I watched them pacing amicably in 
the delightful spring morning, the tears rose for a 
moment to my eyes ; I remembered that it was Sun- 
day, that a long way off in unromantic Islington my 
mother was making ready for the walk to church, 
while I, an exile, looked from my palace window with 
nothing better in the prospect than a solitary journey 
to the chiesa inglese. Annunizata had not gone to 
mass, and when I came downstairs ready dressed she 
explained that she had a headache, and was in need 
of a little company to cheer her up. 

Of course I could not do less than offer to forego 
my walk and attendance at church, which I did with 


66 


MISS MEREDITH. 


a wistful recollection of the beauty and sweetness of 
the day. 

“ Have you heard ? ” she said. “ Costanza goes 
back to Florence to-night. She prefers not to miss 
the last two days of Carnival, Monday and Tuesday. 
So she says,” cried the Marchesina, with a frankness 
that astonished me, even from her ; “ so she says ; 
but between ourselves, Andrea was very attentive 
last night to Emilia di Rossa. Costanza ought to 
understand what he is by now. She has known him 
all her life; she ought certainly to be aware that his 
one little weakness — Andrea is as good as gold — is the 
ladies.” 

1 bent my head low over my work, with an indig- 
nant, shame-stricken consciousness that I was blush- 
ing. He is evidently engaged to Costanza,” I 
thought, and I wished the earth would open and 
swallow me. 

“ And a young girl, like Emilia,” went on Annun- 
ziata; “who knows what construction she might put 
upon his behaviour ? It is not that he says so much, 
but he has a way with him which is open to misinter- 
pretation. Poor little thing, she has no money to 
speak of, and, even if she had, who are the Di Rossa ? 
Andrea, for all he is so free and easy, is the very last 
man to make a mesallia7ice. A convent, say I, will 
be the end of the Di Rossa.” And she sighed con- 
tentedly. 


MISS MEREDITH. 


67 


Was it possible that she was insulting me ? Was 
this a warning, a warning to me, Elsie Meredith ? 
Did she think me an adventuress, setting traps for a 
rich and noble husband, or merely an eager fool 
liable to put a misconstruction on the simplest acts 
of kindliness and courtesy? 

My blazing cheeks, no doubt, confirmed whichever 
suspicion she had been indulging in, but I was deter- 
mined to show her I was not afraid. Lifting my 
face — with its hateful crimson — boldly to hers, I 
said : “ We in England regard marriage and — and love 
in another way. I know it is not so in Italy, but with 
us the reason for getting married is that you are fond 
of some one, and that some one is fond of you. Other 
sorts of marriages are not thought nice,” with which 
bpld and sweeping statement on behalf of my native 
land I returned with trembling fingers to my needle- 
work. 

To do me justice, I fully believed iri my own words. 
That marriage which had not affection for its basis 
WHS shameful had been the simple creed of the little 
world at home. 

“ Indeed ? ’’said Annunziata, with genuine interest ; 
‘‘ but, as you say, it is not so with us.” 

My lips twitched in an irresistible smile. Her 
round eyes met mine so frankly, her round face was 
so unruffled in its amiability, that I could not but feel 


68 


MISS MEREDITH. 


I had made a fool of myself. The guileless lady was 
prattling on, no doubt as usual, as a relief to her own 
feelings, and not with any underlying intention. I 
felt more ashamed than before of my own self-con- 
sciousness. 

“ What is the matter with you, Elsie Meredith ? ” 
cried a voice within me. I think your own mother 
wouldn’t know you ; your own sisters would pass you 
by in the street.” 

“Andrea ought to know,” went on Annunziata, 
“ that such freedom of manners is not permissible in 
Italy between a young man and young women. He 
seems to have forgotten this in America, where, I am 
told, the licence is something shocking.” 

I wished the good lady would be less confidential 
— what was all this to me ? — and I was almost glad 
when the ladies came sailing in from mass, all of them 
evidently in the worst possible tempers. 

There was an air of constraint about the whole 
party at lunch that day. Wedged in between the 
Marchesa and Romeo I sat silent and glum, having 
returned Andrea’s cordial bow very coldly across the 
table. Every one deplored Costanza’s approaching 
departure, rather mechanically, I thought, and that 
young lady herself repeatedly expressed her regret 
at leaving. 

“ Dear Marchesa,” she cried, “ I am at my wits’ 


MISS MEREDITH. 


69 

end with disappointment; but my mother’s letter 
this morning" admits of but one reply. She says she 
cannot spare me from the gaieties of the next two 
days.’* 

“You might come back after Ash Wednesday, 
said Bianca, who sat with her arm round her friend 
between the courses, and whose friendship seemed to 
have been kindled into a blaze by the coming separa- 
tion. 

Dearest Bianca, if I could only persuade you to 
return with me ! ” 

“ Bianca never makes visits,” answered her mother, 
drily. 

“ Were you at church this morning. Miss Mere- 
dith } ” asked the old Marchese, kindly, as the figs 
and chestnuts were put on the table. 

It was the first time that any one had addressed 
me directly throughout the meal, and I blushed hotly 
as I gave my answer. 

The departure of Costanza, her boxes and her 
maid, was, of course, the great event of the afternoon. 
The three gentlemen and Annunziata drove with her 
to the station, and I was left behind with my pupil 
and her mother. 

'A stiff bow from Costanza, a glare through her 
double eye-glass, and a contemptuous “ Good-bye, 
Miss,” in English, had not tended to raise my spirits. 


70 


MISS MEREDITH. 


To be an object of universal dislike was an experi- 
ence as new as it was unpleasant, and I was losing 
confidence in myself with every hour. Even Bianca 
had deserted me, and, ensconced close to her 
mother, shot glances at me of her early curiosity 
and criticism. 

As for the Marchesa, that inscrutable person 
scarcely stopped talking all the afternoon, rattling 
on in her dry, colourless way about nothing at all. 
Speech was to her the shield and buckler which 
silence i^ to persons less gifted. Behind her own 
volubility she could withdraw as behind a bulwark, 
whence she made observations safe from being her- 
self observed. 

I was quite worn out by eight o’clock, when the 
usual Sunday visitors began to arrive. 

With my work in my hand, I sat on the outskirts 
of the throng, not working indeed, but pondering 
deeply. 

“ Miss Meredith, you are very industrious.” 

There before me stood Andrea, a very obstinate 
look on his face, unmindful of Annunziata’s proximity 
and Romeo’s scowls. 

“As it happens, I haven’t put in a sttich for the last 
ten minutes,” I answered quietly, though my heart 
beat 

He drew a chair close to mine. 


M/SS MEREDITH. 


71 


“You are unfair, Andrea, you are unfair,” I 
thought, to make things worse for Miss Meredith 
by singling her out in this way, when you know it 
makes them all so cross. Things are bad enough for 
her as it is, and you might forego your little bit of 
amusement.” 

I began really to stitch with unnatural industry, 
bending an unresponsive face over the work in my 
hand. 

“That is very pretty,” said Andrea. 

“No, no, Marchesino,” I thought again, “you are 
as good as gold, any one could see that from your 
eyes; but you have a little weakness, only one — 
‘the ladies’ — and you must not be encouraged.” 

I turned to Annunziata, who, baffled by the Eng- 
lish speech, sat perplexed and helpless. 

“ Signora,” I said aloud in Italian, “ the Signor 
Marchesino admires my work.” 

“ I taught her how to do it,” cried Annunziata 
breaking into a smile. “ See, it is not so easy to 
draw the fine gold thread through the leather, but she 
is an apt pupil.” 

“ Miss Meredith, I am sorry to see you looking so 
pale.” Andrea dropped his voice very low, adhering 
obstinately to English and fixing his eyes on mine. 

“ I haven’t been out to-day.” 

“ What ! wasting this glorious weather indoors. Is 


72 


MISS MEREDITH. 


it possible that you are falling into the worst of our 
Italian ways.” 

“ I generally go for a walk.” 

I rose as I spoke, and turned to the Marchesina. 
“ I am so tired ; do you think I may be excused.” 

“ Certainly, dear child.” 

Bowing to the assembled company I made my way 
deliberately to the door. Andrea was there before 
me, holding it open, a look of unusual sternness on 
his face. 

“ Good-night, Miss Meredith,” and then before 
them all he held out his hand. 

Only for a moment did our fingers join in a firm 
eager clasp, only for a moment did his eyes meet 
mine in a strange, mysterious glance. Only for a 
moment, but as I fled softly, rapidly along the 
corridor I felt that in that one instant of time all my 
life’s meaning had been changed. “As good as 
gold ; as good as gold.” The words went round and 
round in my head as I lay sobbing on the pillow. 

Somehow that was the only part of Annunziata’s 
warning which remained with me. 


MISS MEREDITH. 


73 


CHAPTER X. 

I ROSE early next morning, and, without waiting for 
my breakfast, ran downstairs, made Pasqiiale, the 
vague servant, open the door for me, and I escaped 
into the sunshine. 

In the long and troubled night just passed I had 
come to a resolution — I would go home. 

From first to last, I told myself, the experiment 
had been a failure. From first to last I had been 
out of touch with the people with whom I had come 
to dwell ; the almost undisguised hostility of the last 
few days was merely the culmination of a growing 
feeling. 

In that atmosphere of suspicion, of disapprobation, 
I could exist no longer. 

Defeated, indeed, but in nowise disgraced, I would 
return whence I came. I would tell them everything 
at home, and they would understand. 

That I had committed some mysterious breach of 
Italian etiquette, outraged some notion of Italian 
propriety, I could not doubt ; but at least I had been 
guilty of nothing of which, judged by my own 
standard, I could feel ashamed. 


74 


MISS MEREDITH. 


But my heart was very heavy as I sped on through 
the streets, instinctively making my way to the 
cathedral. 

It was the second week in March, and the spring 
was full upon us. The grass in the piazza smelt of 
clover, and here and there on the brown hills was the 
flush of blossoming peach or the snow of flowering 
almonds. 

In the soft light of the morning, cathedral, tower, 
and baptistery seemed steeped in a divine calm. 
Their beauty filled me with a great sadness. They 
were my friends ; I had grown to love them, and now 
I was leaving them, perhaps for ever. 

Pacing up and down, and round about, I tried to 
fix my thoughts on my plans, to consider with calm- 
ness my course of action. But this was the up.shot of 
all my endeavours, the one ridiculous irrelevant con- 
clusion at which I could arrive — “ He is certainly not 
engaged to Costanza.” 

As I came round by the main door of the cathedral 
for perhaps the twentieth time, I saw Andrea walking 
across the grass towards me. 

A week ago, I had never seen his face ; now as I 
watched him advancing in the sunlight, it seemed that 
I had known him all my life. Never was figure more 
familiar, never presence more reassuring, than that of 
this stranger. The sight of him neither disturbed 


M/SS MEREDITH, 


75 


nor astonished me ; now that he was here, his coming 
seemed inevitable, a part of the natural order of 
things, Ah, I have found you,” he said quietly, and 
we turned together and strolled towards the Campo 
Santo. 

‘‘ Do you often come here } ” He stopped and 
looked at me dreamily. 

“Often, often. It is all so beautiful and sa sad.” 

“ It is very sad.” 

“ Do you not see how very beautiful it is ” I 
cried, “ that there is nothing like it in the whole 
world } And I am leaving it, and it breaks my 
heart ! ” 

“You are going away V 

“Yes.” I was calm no longer, but strangely 
agitated. I turned away, and began pacing to and 
fro. 

“Ah! they have not made you happy ” His eyes 
flashed as he came up to me. 

“ No,” I said, “ I am not happy ; but it is nobody’s 
fault. They do not like me, and I cannot bear it any 
more. It has never happened to me before — no one 
has thought me very wonderful, very clever, very 
beautiful, very brilliant ; but people have always liked 
me, and if I am not liked I shall die.” 

With which foolish outbreak — which astonished no 
one more than the speaker — I turned away again 
with streaming eyes. 


76 


MISS MEREDITH, 


“ Let US come in here/’ said Andrea, still with that 
strange calm in voice and manner, and together we 
passed into the Campo Santo. 

A bird was singing somewhere among the cypresses ; 
the daffodils rose golden in the grass ; the strip of sky 
between the cloisters was intensely blue. 

“ Miss Meredith,” said Andrea, taking my hand, 
“ will you make me very happy — will you be my 
wife ? ” 

We were standing in the grass-plot, face to face, 
and he was very pale. 

His words seemed the most natural thing in the 
world. I ought, perhaps, to have made a protest, to 
have reminded him of family claims and dues, to have 
made sure that love, not chivalry, was speaking. 

But I only said, “Yes,” very low, looking at him 
as we stood there among the tombs, under the blue 
heavens. 

“As you came down the gallery, in the sunlight, 
with the little grey gown, and the frightened look in 
the modest eyes, I said to myself, ‘ Here, with the 
help of God, comes my wife !’ ” 

I do not know how long we had been in the 
cloisters, pacing slowly, hand in hand, almost in 
silence. The sun was high in the heavens, and the 
bird in the cypresses sang no more. 


MISS MEREDITH. 


7 / 


“ Do you know,” cried Andrea, stopping suddenly, 
and laughing, “here is a most ridiculous thing! 
What is your name ? for I haven’t the ghost of an 
idea!” 

“ Elsie.” I laughed too. The joke struck us 
both as an excellent one. 

“ Elsie ! Ah, the sweet name ! Elsie, Elsie I Was 
ever such a dear little name } What shall we do 
next, Elsie, my friend } ” 

“Take me to the mountains! ” I cried, suddenly 
aware that I was tired to exhaustion, that I had had 
no sleep and no breakfast. “Take me to the moun- 
tains ; I have longed, longed for them all these 
days!” 

I staggered a little, and closed my eyes. 

When I opened them he was holding me in his 
arms, looking down anxiously at my face. 

“ Yes, we will go to the mountains ; but first I shall 
take you home, and give you something to eat and 
drink, Elsie.” 


Af/SS AIEREDITH. 


7 « 


CHAPTER XI. 

‘‘You are not afraid said Andrea, as we turned 
on to the Lung’ Arno and came in sight of tlie house. 

“ No,” I answered in all good faith, a little resent- 
ing the question. 

After all, what was there to fear } This was the 
nineteenth century, when people’s marriages were 
looked upon as their own affairs, and the paternal 
blessing — since it had ceased to be a sine qua non — 
was never long withheld. 

If Andrea’s family were disappointed in his choice, 
and I supposed that at first such would be the case, 
it lay with me to turn that disappointment into 
satisfaction. 

I had but a modest opinion of myself, yet I knew 
that in making me his wife Andrea was doing nothing 
to disgrace himself; his good taste, perhaps, was at 
fault, but that was all. 

You see, I had been educated in a very primitive 
and unworldly school of manners, and must ask you 
to forgive my ignorance. 

Yet I confess my heart did beat rather fast as we 


M/SS MEREDITH, 


79 


made our way up the steps into the empty hall, and 
I wished the next few hours well over. 

I reminded myself that I was under Andrea’s wing> 
safe from harm, but looking up at Andrea I was not 
quite sure of his own unruffled self-possession. A 
distant hum of voices greeted us as we entered, grow- 
ing louder with every stair we mounted, and when 
we reached the landing leading to the gallery, there 
stood the whole family assembled like the people in 
a comedy. 

To judge from the sounds we heard, they had 
been engaged in excited discussion, every one speak- 
ing at once, but at our appearance a dead and awful 
silence fell upon the group. 

Slowly we advanced, the mark of every eye, then 
came to a stop well in front of the group. 

It seemed an age, but I believe it was less than a 
minute, before the Marchesa stepped forward, looking 
straight at me and away from her son, so as not in 
the least to include him in her condemnation, and 
said : “ I am truly sorry. Miss Meredith, for I was 
given to understand that your mother was a very 
respectable w'oman.” 

“ Mother ! ” cried Andrea, with a pale face and 
flashing, eyes, “ be careful of your words.” Then 
taking my hand, he turned to the old Marchese, 
who stood helpless and speechless in the back- 


8o 


J//SS MEREDITH. 


ground, and said loudly and deliberately: “This 
lady has promised to be my wife.” 

For an instant no one spoke, but .there was no 
mistaking the meaning of their silence ; then Romeo 
called out in a voice of suppressed fury : It is im- 
possible ! ” 

Andrea, still holding my hand, turned with awful 
calm upon his brother. Annunziata’s ready tears 
were flowing, and Bianca gazed open-mouthed with 
horror and excitement upon the scene. 

“Romeo,” said Andrea, tightening his hold of my 
fingers, “ this is no affair of yours. Once before you 
tried to interfere in my life ; I should have thought 
the result had been too discouraging for a second 
attempt.” 

“ It is the afifair of all of us when you try to bring 
disgrace on the family.” 

“ Disgrace ! Sir, do you know what word you are 
using, and in reference to whom ? ” 

“ Oh, the Signorina, of course, is charming. I 
have nothing to say against her.” 

He bowed low, and, as our eyes met, I knew he 
was my enemy. 

“ Andrea,” said his mother, interposing between her 
sons, “ this is no time and place for discussion. Miss 
Meredith shall come with me, and you shall endeav- 
our to explain to your father how it is you have 
insulted him.” 


iMJSS MEREDITH. 


8i 


“ My son,” said the Marchese, speaking for the 
first time, with a certain mournful dignity, “ never 
before has such a thing happened in our family as 
that a wife should be brought home to it without the 
head of the house being consulted. What am I to 
think of this want of confidence, of respect, except 
that you are ashamed of your choice ^ ” 

“ Father,” answered Andrea, drawing my hand 
through his arm, “ it has throughout been my inten- 
tion of asking your consent and your blessing. Nor 
has there been any concealment on my part. From 
the first I have expressed my admiration of this lady 
very openly to you all. What is the result that she 
is watched, persecuted like a suspected criminal, and 
finally driven away — she a young girl, a stranger 
in a foreign land. Can you expect the man who 
loves her to stand by and see this without letting 
her know at the first opportunity that there is one 
on whose protection she can at once and always 
rely.?” 

“ Andrea,” said his mother, “ we did but try our 
best to prevent what we one and all regard as a mis- 
fortune. Miss Meredith is no suitable bride for a 
son of the house of Brogi. Oh ” (as he opened his 
lips as about to protest), “ I have nothing to say 
against her, though indeed you cannot expect me to 
be lost in admiration of her discretion.” 


S2 MISS MEREDITH. 

The Marchesa shrugged her shoulders and threw 
out her hands as she spoke, with an impatience which 
she rarely displayed, 

Andrea answered very quietly : “ My mother, this 
is no time and place for such a discussion/ With 
your permission I will retire with my father, and 
Miss Meredith shall withdraw to her own room.” 
He released my hand very gently from hi* arm, and 
stood a moment looking down at me. 

“You are not afraid, Elsie?” he whispered in 
English. 

“Yes, I am frightened to death ! ” 

“ It will be all right very soon.” 

“ Must you leave me, Andrea ? ” 

“ Yes, dear, I must.” 

He went over to his father and gave him his arm. 
All this time Annunziata was weeping like the wal- 
rus in “Alice,” her loud sobs echoing dismally 
throughout the house. 

“ Elsie,” said Andrea, as he prepared te descend 
with the Marchese, “go straight to your room.” 

I turned without a word, and stunned, astonished, 
unutterably miserable, fled upstairs without a glance 
at the hostile group on the landing. 

Once the door safely shut behind me, my pent-up 
feelings found vent, and I sobbed hysterically. 

Was ever such a morning in a woman’s life ? And 
I had had no breakfast. 


M/SS MEREDITH. 


83 


I was not allowed much time in which to indulge 
in my emotions. Very soon came a knock at the 
door, and a maid entered with wine, bread and chest- 
nuts. With the volubility of Italian servants she 
pressed me to eat and drink, and when she departed 
with the empty tray I felt refreslied and ready to 
fight my battle to the last. A second knock at the 
door was not long in following the first, and this time 
it was the Marchesa who responded to my “ Come 
in.” 

My heart sank considerably as the stately little 
lady advanced towards me, and I inwardly reproached 
Andrea for his desertion. 


84 


MISS MEREDITH. 


( 


CHAPTER XIL 

“ Miss Meredith,” said the Marchesa, taking the 
chair I mechanically offered her, and waving her 
hand towards another, “ pray be seated.” 

I obeyed, feeling secretly much in awe of the rigid 
little figure sitting very upright opposite me. 

“ What, after all, is the love of a young man but 
a passing infatuation ? ” 

Thus was the first gun fired into the enemy’s 
camp, but there was no answering volley. 

That she spoke in all good faith I fully believe, 
and I felt how useless would be any discussion 
between us of the point. I looked down in silence. 

“ Miss Meredith,” went on the dry, fluent tones, 
which I was beginning to feel were the tones of 
doom, “ I will refrain from blaming you in this unfor- 
tunate matter. I will merely state the case as it 
stands. Y ou come into this family, are well received, 
kindly treated, and regarded with esteem by us all. 
In return for this, I am bound to say, you perform 
your duties and do what is required of you with 
amiability. So far all is well. But there are tradi- 
tions, feelings, sacred customs and emotions belong- 


M/SS MEREDITH. 


8S 


ing to the family where you have been received of 
which you can have no knowledge. That is not 
required nor expected of you. What is expected of 
you, as of every right-minded person, is that you 
should at least respect what is of such importance to 
others. Is this the case ? Have you not rather 
taken delight in outraging our feelings in the most 
delicate relations ; in trampling, in your selfish igno- 
rance, on all that we hold most dear ? ” 

Her words stung me ; they were cruel words, but I 
had sworn inwardly to stand by my guns. 

With hands interlocked and drooping head I sat 
before her without a word. 

“ We had looked forward to this home-coming of 
my son,” she went on, branching off into another 
talk, “as to the beginning of a fresh epoch of our 
lives, his father and I, we that are no longer young. 
To him we had looked for the carrying on of our 
race. From my daughter-in-law we have been 
obliged to despair of issue. Andrea suitably married 
and established in the home of his ancestors, is what 
we all dreamed one day to see — nor do I even now 
entirely abandon the hope of seeing it.” 

With burning cheeks, and an awful sense that a 
web was being woven about me, I rose stiffly from 
my seat, and went over to a cabinet where stood my 
mother s portrait. 


86 


MISS MEREDITH. 


I looked a moment at the pictured eyes, as if for 
guidance, then said in a low vc'ice : 

“ Signora Marchesa, I have given my word to your 
son, and only at his bidding can I take it back.” 

“ It does not take much penetration,” she replied, 
“ to know that my son is the last person to bid you 
do anything of the kind. That he is the soul of 
chivalry, that the very fact of a person being in an 
unfortunate position would of itself attract his regard, 
a child might easily discover.” 

She spoke with such genuine feeling that for a 
moment my heart went out towards her ; for a moment 
our eyes met and not unkindly. 

“ No doubt,” she went on, after a pause, and rising 
from her seat, “no doubt you represented the precau- 
tions we thought necessary to adopt, for your own 
protection as well as my son’s, as a form of persecu- 
tion. If you did not actually represent it to him, I 
feel sure you gave him to understand that such was 
the case.” 

She had hit the mark. 

With an agonising rush of shame, of despair, I 
remembered my own outbreak on the piazza that 
morning; how I had confided to Andrea, unasked, 
my intention of going away, and of the sorrow the 
prospect gave me. 

Had I been mistaken } Had the message of his 


M/SS MEREDITH 


S7 

eyes, his voice, his manner, meant nothing ? Had I 
indeed been unmindful of my woman’s modesty? 
The Marchesa was aware at once of having struck 
home, and the monotonous tones began again. 

“ Of course, Miss Meredith, if you choose to take 
advantage of my son’s chivalry, and of his passing 
fancy — for Andrea is exceedingly susceptible, and, no 
doubt, believes himself in love with you — if,‘ I say, 
you choose to do this, there is no more to be said. 
Andrea will never take back his word, on that you 
may rely. But be sure of this, his life will be spoiled, 
and he will know it. It is not to be expected that 
you should realise the meaning of ancestral pride, of 
family honour. Perhaps you think the sentiments 
which have taken centuries to grow can wither up in 
a day before the flame of a foolish fancy ? ” 

She had conquered. Moving over to her I looked 
straight in her face. My voice rang strange and 
hollow : “ By marrying your son I should bring no 
disgrace upon him and his family. But I do not 
intend to marry him 

She had not anticipated so easy a victory. Her 
cheek flushed, almost as if with compunction. She 
held out her hands towards me. 

But I turned away ungraciously, and, going up to 
the chest, began to lift out my under linen, and to 
pile it on the bed. 


88 


MISS MEREDITH. 


“ Signora, do not thank me, do not praise me. I 
do not know if I am doing right or wrong.” 

‘‘Signorina, you have taken the course of an honour- 
able woman.” 

I went over to the corner where my box stood, 
and lifted the lid with trembling hands. 

“ Signora Marchesa, will your servant find out 
what hour of the night the train leaves for Genoa? 
and will he have a drosky ready in time to take me 
to the station ? ” 

Miss Meredith, there is no necessity for this 
haste. You cannot depart like this, and without 
advising your family.” 

I laid a dress — the little black dress I had worn 
at the dance — at the bottom of the box. It ought 
to have gone at the top, but such details did not 
occupy me at the moment. 

“I trust,” I said, “that there may be no difficul- 
ties placed in the way of my immediate departure.” 

She came up to me in some agitation. 

“ But, Signorina ! ” 

“ Signora,” I answered, “ you have my promise. 
Is not that what you wanted ? ” 

I intended a dismissal, I frankly own it, but the 
Marchesa took my rudeness with such humility that 
for the moment I felt ashamed of myself. 

“You have forced me. Miss Meredith, to speak to 
you as I have never spoken before to a stranger 


MISS MEREDITH, 


9 


beneath my roof. To fly in the face of the hospitable 
traditions of the house ” 

There came a knock at the door, and the servant 
announced that the Marchesino desired to speak 
with Miss Meredith. 

We two women, who both loved Andrea, looked at 
one another. 

‘‘You will have to tell him yourself, Signorina; 
from no one else would my son receive your mes- 
sage.” The Marchesa turned away as she spoke. 

“ I will write to him.” 

Hastily dismissing the servant with words to the 
effect that Andrea should be waited on in a few 
minutes, the Marchesa handed me, in silence, the 
little paper case which lay on the table. With un- 
certain fingers I wrote: 

“ We were both of us hasty and ill-advised this 
morning. I must thank you for the great honour 
you have done me, but at the same time I must beg 
of you to release me from the promise I have made. — 
Elsie Meredith.” 

I handed the open sheet to the Marchesa, who 
read it carefully, folded it up, thanked me and went 
from the room. 

Then suddenly the great bed began to waltz ; the 
open box in the corner, the painted ceiling, the chest 
and cabinet to whirl about in hopeless confusion. I 
don’t know how it came about, but for the first time 
in my life I fainted. 


90 


MISS MEREDITH. 


CHAPTER XIII. 

It was four o’clock in the afternoon ; already the 
front of the house was in shadow, and the drawing- 
room was cool and dark. Here Andrea and I weie 
standing face to face; both pale, both resolute, while 
the Marchesa looked from one to the other with 
anxious eyes. 

“You wrote this he asked, holding up my unfor- 
tunate scrawl. 

“Yes, I wrote it.”' 

“ And you meant what you wrote } ” 

“Yes.” 

He came a little nearer to me, speaking, it seemed, 
with a certain passionate contempt. 

“And you expected me, Elsie, to accept such an 
answer } ” 

Before the fire of his glance my eyes fell suddenly. 
“ I have no other answer to give you,” I murmured 
brokenly. 

The Marchesa, who had stayed in the room by my 
own request, glanced questioningly from one to the 
other, evidently unable to follow the rapid English 
of the dialogue. 


MISS MEREDITH. 


9 * 


“ Is it possible, Elsie, that you hav^e deceived 
me? That you, who seemed so true, are falser 
than words can say ? - Have you forgotten what 
you said to me, what your eyes said as well as 
your lips, a few short hours ago ? ” 

“I have not forgotten, but I cannot marry you.” 

Then you do not love me, Elsie ? you have 
been amusing yourself.” 

“ If you choose to think so, I cannot help it.” 

“ Elsie, whatever promise you have made to my 
mother, whatever promise may have been extorted 
from you, remember that your first promise and 
your duty were to me.” 

I shivered from head to foot, while my heart 
echoed his words. But I had given my word, and 
I would not go back from it. Never should my 
mothej^’s daughter thrust herself unwelcomed in 
any house. 

“ Have you nothing to say to me, Elsie ? ” 

“ Nothing.” 

“ Mother,” he cried, turning flashing eyes to the 
Marchesa, “ what have you been saying to her, by 
what means have you so transformed her, how 
have you succeeded in wringing from her a most 
unjust promise ? ” 

“Stay,” I interposed, speaking also in Italian, 
“ no promise has been wrung from me, I gave it 


92 


NISS MEREDITH. 


freely. Signor Marchesino, it seems you cannot 
believe it, yet it is true that of my own free will 
I refuse to marry you, that I take back my un- 
considered word of this morning. I am no wife 
for you, and you no husband for me ; a few hours 
of reflection have sufficed very plairily to show me 
that.” 

He stood there, paler than ever, looking at me 
with a piteous air of incredulity. “ Elsie, it is not 
possible — consider, remember — it is not true ! ” 

His voice broke, wavered, and fell ; from the 
passionate entreaty of his eyes I turned my own away. 

“ It is true. Signor, that I will never, never marry 
you.” 

Clear, cold, and cruel, though very low, were the 
tones of my voice ; I know not what angel or fiend 
was giving me strength and utterance ; I only know 
that it was not normal Elsie who thus spoke and 
acted. 

There was a pause, which seemed to last an age, 
then once again his voice broke the stillness. 

“Since, then, you choose to spoil my life, Elsie, 
and perhaps (who knows ? ) your own, there is no 
more to be said. Far be it from me to extort a 
woman’s consent from her. The only love worth 
having is that which is given freely, which has cour- 
age, which has pride.” 


M/SS MEREDITH. 


93 


Very hard and contemptuous sounded his words, 
My heart cried out in agony : “ Andrea, you are 
unjust ! ” but I stood there dumb as a fish, with 
clasped hands and drooping head. 

“ Mother,” went on Andrea, “ will you kindly 
summon my father and the others. Miss Meredith^ 
oblige me and stay a few moments : I am sorry to 
trouble you. 

They came in slowly through the open door, the 
old man, his son and the two younger ladies, anxious, 
expectant. 

Andrea turned towards them. 

“ My father,” he said, “this lady refuses to marry 
me, and no doubt every body is content. That she 
declines to face the hostility, the discourtesy of my 
family, is not perhaps greatly to be wondered at. It 
is evident that I am not considered worthy of so great 
a sacrifice on her part ; I do not blame her ; rather I 
blame my own credulity in thinking my love returned. 
But I wish you all to know,” he added, “that I have 
entirely altered my plans. I shall write off my 
appointment in England, and shall start to-night for 
Livorno, on my way to America. My mother, you 
will kindly send for an orario that I may know at 
what time to order the carriage. Miss Meredith, I 
bid you good-bye.” 

He turned rcund suddenly and faced me, holding 
out his hand with an air of ceremony. 


94 


MISS MEREDITH. 


As for me, I glanced from the dear hand, the dear 
eyes to the circle of dismayed faces beyond, then, 
without a word, I rushed through the open door to 
my room. 

Not daring to allow myself a moment’s thought, I 
fell to immediately packing — fitting in a neat mosaic 
of stockings and petticoats as though it were the one 
object of existence. 

I do not know if it were minutes or hours before 
the Marchesa came in, pale and unusually agitated, 
with no air of enjoying her victory. 

“ Signorina,” she said, “ the train for Genoa leaves at 
8; I have ordered the carriage for 7.15. You would 
prefer, perhaps, to dine in your room ? ” 

‘‘ I do not wish for dinner, thank you.” 

“You must allow me to thank you once again. 
Miss Meredith.” 

“ Do not thank me,” I cried with sudden passion, 
“ I have done nothing to be thanked for.” 

For, indeed, I was enjoying none of the compensa- 
tions of martyrdom ; for me it was the pang without 
the palm ; I had fallen in a cause in which I did not 
believe, had been pressed into a service for which I 
had no enthusiasm. 

“ If you will excuse me, Marchesa,” I went on, 
“there are some books of mine in the schoolroom 
which I must fetch ; ” and, bowing slightly, I swept 
into the corridor with an air as stately as her own. 


M/SS MEREDITH. 


95 


Andrea's room was on the same floor as my own, 
but at the other end of the passage, and I had to 
pass it on my way to the schoolroom. The door 
stood wide open, and just outside was a large trunk, 
which Pasquale, the servant, was engaged in packing, 
while his master gave directions and handed things 
from the threshold. 

I heard their voices as I came. 

“ At what time does the train go for Livorno, did 
you say ? 

“At 9, excellenza. The carriage will be back in 
time from the station.” 

I glided past as rapidly as possible, filled with a 
certain mournful humour at this spectacle of the 
gentleman packing his box at one end of the hall, 
while the lady packed hers at the other. 

My room was empty when I regained it, and with 
a heavy heart I finished my sad task, locking the 
box, labelling and strapping it. 

Then I put on my grey travelling dress, my hat, 
veil, and gloves, and sat down by the window. 

It was only half-past five, and these preparations 
were a little premature ; but this confused, chaotic 
day seemed beyond the ordinary measurements of 
time. 

A maid-servant, with a dainty little dinner on a 
tray, was the next arrival on the scene. She set it 


96 AI/SS MEREDITH. 

down on a table near me, but I took no heed. As if 
I could have swallowed a mouthful ! 

I was quite calm now, only unutterably mournful. 
“ I have spoilt my life,” I thought, as my eyes fixed 
themselves drearily on the river, the old houses 
opposite, the marble bridge — once all so strange, now 
grown so dear. “ I have spoilt my life, and for what } 
Ah, if mother had only been here to stand by me ! 
But I was alone. What was I to do t Oh, Andrea, 
do you hate me ? ” 

The tears streamed down my face as I sat. “ Oh, 
my beloved Pisa,” I thought again, “ how can I bear 
to leave you ! ” 

Once more came a knock at the door — the little, 
quick knock of the Marchesa ; and as I responded 
duly, I reflected : “ No doubt she comes to insult me 
with my salary. And the worst of it is, I shall have 
to take it ; for if I don’t, how am I to get home ? ” 

She looked very unlike her usual self-possessed self 
as she came towards me. 

“ Miss Meredith, my husband wishes to speak to 
you.” 

I rose wearily in mechanical obedience, and followed 
her, silent and dejected, downstairs to the Marchese’s 
room. Here, amid his books and papers, sat the old 
man, looking the picture of wretchedness. 

“ Ah, Signorina,” he said, “ what will you think of 


MISS MEREDITH, 


97 


me, of us all ? Of the favour which, very humbly, I 
have to beg of you ? I cannot bear thus to part 
from my son ; he is going far away from me, in anger, 
for an indefinite time. It is you, and you only, who 
can persuade him to stop.” 

I looked up in sudden astonishment. 

“ My child, go to him ; tell him that he can stay.” 

“Signor Marchese, I am sorry, but you ask what 
is impossible.” 

“ I do not wonder,” he said, with a most touching 
yet dignified humility, “ I do not wonder at your 
reply. My wife, it is your part to speak to this 
lady.” 

With set lips yet unblenching front the gallant 
little Marchesa advanced. 

“ Miss Meredith, do not in this matter consider 
yourself bound by any promise you have made to 
me. I release you from it.” 

“ May not the matter be considered ended } ” I 
cried in very weariness. “ That I have come between 
your son and his family no one regrets more than I. 
Only let me go away.” 

The old man rose slowly, left the room, and went 
to the foot of the stairs. 

“ Andrea, Andrea,” I heard him call. 

“ His excellency has not finished packing,” an- 
swered the voice of Pasquale. 


98 


MISS MEREDITH. 


“Andrea, Andrea,” cried his father again; then 
came rapid footsteps, and in a few seconds Andrea 
stood once more before me. 

He turned from one to the other questioningly. 

The Marchese took my hand. 

“ My son,” he said, “ can you not persuade this 
lady to remain with us ? ” 

He looked up, and our eyes met ; but on neither 
side was speech or movement. 

The old man went on. 

“ Andrea, it is possible that we did wrong, your 
mother and I, in attempting to interfere with you in 
this niatter. Y ou must forgive us if we are slow to un- 
derstand the new spirit of radicalism which, it seems, 
is the spirit of the times. Once before our wishes 
clashed ; but, my son, I cannot bear to send you 
away in anger a second time. As for this lady, she 
knows how deeply we all respect her. Persuade her 
to forgive us, if indeed you can.” 

Andrea, I saw, was deeply moved ; he shaded his 
eyes with his hand, and the tears flowed down my 
own cheeks unchecked. 

“ Well, Elsie, it is for you to decide.” He .spoke at 
last, coldly, in an off-hand manner. 

I was lacking in pride, perhaps, in dignity, for 
though I said nothing, I held out my hand. 

‘‘ Are you quite sure you love me, Elsie ^ ” 

“ Quite, quite sure, Andrea.” 


MISS MEREDITH. 


99 


“ I am so glad," cried Bianca, some ten minutes 
later, giving me a hug, I am so glad it is you, and 
not that bad-tempered Costanza.’’ 

“ We are all glad,” said the old Marchese, holding 
out his hand with a smile, while Romeo and his 
mother stood bearing their defeat with commendable 
grace. 


So it came to pass that on the evening of that 
wonderful day Andrea and I, instead of being borne 
by express trains to Genoa and Leghorn respectively, 
were pacing the gallery arm in arm in the sunlight. 

We had been engaged in this occupation for about 
an hour, and now he knew all about my mother and 
sisters, and the details of the happy life at Islington. 

“We will live in England, but every year we will 
come to Italy,” he was saying, as we paused before 
the Bronzino, which seemed to have taken in the 
situation. 

“ I love Italy more than any place in the world,” I 
answered. 

A pause. 

“ We will be married immediately after Easter, 
Elsie.” 

“ Andrea, I go home the day after to-morrow.” 

“ And to-morrow,” he said, “ we will go to the 
mountains.” 


THE END. 


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